The Vault Tec Guide to Serialized Fiction
by AlphaMonkey
Summary: Vault Tec: keeping you safe from nuclear annihilation and tweaking your genetic code without your knowledge! Now offering serialized fiction for low, low prices. Note: Vault Tec not responsible for unexplained mutations or sudden death resulting from use.
1. GOAT: Oracle of Doom

Vault-Tec, makers of the world-famous Mark V Hazardous Environment Preservation and Human Sterilization Chamber are proud to present our newest product, the Vault-Tec Guide to Serialized Fiction. Ten weeks in the making, this guide has been compiled by lab monkeys injected with near-lethal doses of amphetamines, toiling endlessly to provide you with the very best end merchandise sadistically tortured perversions of nature can manufacture. As you know, we at Vault-Tec believe in adhering to the highest standards of excellence in all our products; thus, we can assure you that our dedicated quality control staff have combed every paragraph of this guide to ensure that it is 100% lice free.

Please note, however, that despite extensive experimentation on unwitting human test subjects, the VTGSF may cause side effects such as headache, nausea, dry mouth, projectile vomiting, stomach ulcers, deep-vein thrombosis, cardiac arrhythmia, priapism, and renal failure. Should side effects persist, please see a licensed physician immediately. Vault-Tec is not responsible for incidences of death, dismemberment, or unexplained mutation that may be caused by unauthorized or incorrect use of this product. Thank you for choosing Vault-Tec for your family entertainment needs. And now, our feature presentation…

**The Vault-Tec Guide to Serialized Fiction**

Entry A, Subsection B-19: G.O.A.T. – Oracle of Doom

_Vault 101 Learning Annex_

_1142 Hours_

"The what-now?"

She'd been skeptical of the test going in. She'd grown even more skeptical of it when it was revealed that the mythical "General Occupational Aptitude Test," or G.O.A.T. to the Vault's general populace, determined one's eventual career path and thus path of future existence by utilizing such insightful questions as "Oh no, you've just been exposed to ungodly amounts of radioactive waste and now have a third arm growing from your stomach. What do you do?"

And yet, even given this sudden burst of insight into the test's actual nature, she still found herself largely unprepared for what this supposed Oracle, as interpreted by her teacher, said lay in store for her.

Said teacher was one Mr. Brotch. He was an African-American man in his early 40s, clean shaven with short hair and a friendly expression, though that expression was currently laced with a healthy dose of skepticism and even amusement. He shrugged and smiled as he flipped through her test one more time and checked over the answers she'd selected. He compared those answers against the standard issue answer key thoughtfully provided by Vault-Tec and nodded slowly, trying to ignore the look of burgeoning horror on her face that was birthed by his nodding. "Yep. You heard right. According to the G.O.A.T., you're destined to become our next Vault chaplain." His smile widened, though he spoke the next words under his breath. "God help us all."

"You're damn right, God help us all. Look, Mr. Brotch, far be it from me to argue with the all knowing General Occupational Aptitude Test." Referring to the test by its full name seemed to give it, and by association, her words, a bit more weight, lending them a sense of "mysteriousness" and perhaps even "spooky reverence" that they otherwise might not have had. The way she waggled her fingers, however, that just made the whole production look bloody silly. "Heaven forefend I question the ever-present omniscience that has determined the fates of countless lives for hundreds of years, but… if I believed in that sort of thing, I'm pretty sure God would be smiting the guy who invented this test." She thumped her right fist into her left palm, deriving a twisted form of primal satisfaction at the hearty *Smack!* sound that accompanied the gesture. "Like… like a good, solid smiting. In places where people really ought not to be smitten."

Though privately amused, Brotch felt it best not to encourage the ranting of a sixteen year old girl. Especially not this particular sixteen year old girl. "Megan," he said, in as stern a tone as he could manage… which wasn't very, considering he was also trying quite hard not to laugh.

She took a slow, deep breath. In and out. Her hands at her sides clenched and unclenched, and her mouth set into a grim line. "Sorry. It's just… I know the red hair and the blue eyes and the freckles and everything scream 'Hey, I'm Irish, don'cha know? And really religious! Now quit tryin' ta steal me Lucky Sugar Bombs and me pot o' gold and go fetch me a bottle a' whiskey so's I can get good an' drunk 'afore I go beat me husband!'" She shook her head and snorted disdainfully. "But just because I -look- like a decent, hard working, God-fearing Mick doesn't mean I am one. I mean, that accent? Just now? Totally fake in case you couldn't tell."

"Megan."

The mild rebuke in his tone went completely unheeded as she continued ranting. As yet, no flecks of white foam had appeared at the corners of her mouth, but Brotch was fairly certain those could make a command appearance at any moment. He had just begun to debate the merits of approaching her father and asking James to administer a preventative battery of rabies vaccinations, when her voice reached a new level of shrill, snapping him out of his contemplative trance. "I mean, it's just ridiculous! This… this is -me.- I let Amata handle the diplomatic stuff. My idea of diplomacy is to tell someone they're an idiot and then go make fun of their haircut or something. Possibly while discharging unauthorized firearms in their general direction. And this stupid test expects me to be some kind of spiritual guide? A healer of minds and hearts? That's crazy. That's… that's ludicrous! That's… that's like a billion other synonyms for ludicrous that I can't think of right now because I'm far too upset and suffering one major vocabulary failure."

It was his belief that what actually brought her tirade to a conclusion was the severe hypoxia brought upon by excessive talking, but he chose not to share his theory with her. It would, after all, be very untoward to be given an object lesson in the phrase "savage pummeling" by a teenage girl. Instead, he merely held up both hands in a placating gesture. "I was just about to say that I think the test is full of crap, too."

Those simple words coupled with his calm tone stopped her dead in her tracks.

"Oh."

"One of these days you'll have to let me finish a sentence sometime," he replied with a smirk, looking up at her from where he was seated behind his desk.

She managed a sheepish grin. "Not bloody likely, teach."

He rolled his eyes and even chuckled ruefully. There were few things short of a five hundred pound slug of depleted uranium fired at Mach 3 that could stop Megan once she'd decided to start running her mouth. And running her mouth? That was a decision she made rather lightly. "I'm… starting to come to grips with that. Listen, I like your Dad. James is a good man… and despite the fact that I'm your teacher, and you all are a bunch of loud, unruly, horrible teenagers… heh… I like you, too. So I'll tell you what. You just... tell me how you want the test to turn out for you, and… I'll fudge the results a little."

A pair of soft blue eyes widened in surprise, but a small, very much amused smirk formed underneath it as Megan adopted an expression of utter nonchalance and folded her arms across her chest. "Wow. Blatant cheating. I'm impressed. I didn't realize you had it in you, Mr. Brotch."

"It's not really cheating," he replied with a half-shrug. "I mean, no one can really -fail- the G.O.A.T."

There was something about the young girl's chuckle – something that suggested an almost sinister sense of amusement. And if her chuckle suggested it, her smile took those vague hints and forever emblazoned them upon the night sky in hot pink neon lettering ten feet high and thrice as wide. She jerked a thumb over her shoulder to where a small cluster of three students wearing ill-fitting leather jackets over the standard-issue, blue Vault 101 jumpsuits, were standing in a corner of the room. The three were talking – actually, it was more appropriate to say two were standing around watching while the one with an idiotic pompadour haircut was waving his arms, gesticulating wildly, and raving like the rag-clad prophesiers of doom that had lined the streets of every major American city before the bombs had fallen. "I don't know about that, Mr. Brotch. Butch is destined to be a hairdresser. That's failure most epic right there."

"Your point is well taken."

-----

_Vault 101 Cafeteria_

_1337 Hours_

Being the only daughter of Vault 101's Overseer, Amata had been raised in a strict, one might even say unforgiving, environment. Her father had always been a harsh disciplinarian, but he had taught her the importance of such values as responsibility, loyalty, dedication, and perhaps most important of all, patience. Still, there was only so much the fragile psyche of a sixteen year old girl could take when she was forced to watch her best friend use a spork to push reconstituted mashed potatoes around on a plate for thirty minutes.

"Meg." Her friend's name came out with perhaps a bit more ire than was strictly necessary as she crumpled her napkin, dashed it to the table and pushed her plate away, then turned in her seat to glare accusingly at the redheaded girl seated next to her.

Megan, however, was lost in her own little world, entrusted with that gravest of duties: shepherding an entire technologically advanced civilization into existence from mounds of barren Instamash. She looked up to see Amata scowling at her and blinked in response. "Huh?"

"Are you still freaking out about this G.O.A.T. thing?"

"Chaplain, Amata. Chaplain!" In a perversely ironic parody of Butch's earlier fit of handwaving, Megan was waving her own hands in a spasmodic pattern that suggested that perhaps the G.O.A.T.'s results were not as full of equine refuse as she had previously believed; she was clearly having some manner of divine revelation… or perhaps merely an epileptic seizure. It was difficult to tell which as the two were often mistaken for each other, even by those who greatly venerated prophets predisposed towards having such revelations, and the far more scarce individuals who venerated those prone to epileptic seizures. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph in a tiny canoe, the little piece of paper that's supposed to tell me what I'm destined to do with the rest of my life is prophesying that I'm going to be a chaplain. I mean, my God. It might just as well have told me I was slated for a career in the Maintenance department, burning garbage."

At this, she sighed melodramatically – the gift for extensive melodrama being a trait hard-coded into the genome of teenage girls since time immemorial. She pushed her tray aside, then slumped forward, allowing her forehead to thump lightly against the table and rest against the cool, metallic surface. "My Dad's going to kill me, and then, when I get upstairs, my Mom's going to drop her harp, get off her cloud, and shank St. Peter in the back with a busted lab beaker so she can get a chance to kill me again."

"You're exaggerating."

"I do that a lot. For comedic effect."

Amata snorted and reached out to pat her friend on the shoulder. "What are you stressing so much for, anyway? Mr. Brotch said he'd… you know… take care of things."

Megan straightened up, completely ignoring the bemused looks her antics had drawn from the other Vault residents that had been making their way back and forth through the Vault's cafeteria. "Well, yeah, but your Dad's the Overseer, and you more than anyone ought to know how… um… how can I put this tactfully?"

" 'Tact is for people who aren't witty enough to be sarcastic.' I remember someone saying that. Someone named you," Amata pointed out with a wry smirk.

"Yes, well… um… the thrust of my argument here is that your Dad… he's very… thorough… and… I imagine he'd want to review all the G.O.A.T. results?" She refrained from saying "If only so he could spend a few hours stroking his ego to the answers to that last question." She refrained from -thinking- "If only so he could spend a few hours stroking his something-that-was-definitely-not-his-ego to the answers to that last question."

"And you're worried he might notice that Mr. Brotch… er… tampered with your results?"

"Well… yes." Megan shrugged. "Amata, your Dad and I will always be like two wet cats fighting in a sack-"

Much blinking ensued as the Overseer's daughter encountered extreme difficulty when attempting to process the mental image spawned from that phrase. "Where do you come up with these metaphors?"

"Technically that's a simile. Notice the use of the word 'like.'"

"Notice the waving of my fist."

Megan pretended to shy backwards and cower in fright. "Don't hit me. I bruise easy. Anyway, like I was saying, we'll never get along, him and me, but… he's not stupid, I'll give him that. If he looked hard enough he might find something… hinky… in the results. And I've definitely given him enough reasons to want to look -real- close at my G.O.A.T. scores."

"Maybe," the other girl acknowledged with a brief nod of her head. "But two things. One, I don't think Mr. Brotch would even have offered to tweak your numbers if he wasn't confident he could get away with it. And two, well…" Amata did a little negligent "pageant-wave" with her hand. "My father might actually be -happy- given what the G.O.A.T. says I'm going to be doing with my life. So, maybe he won't bother to look too hard at the rest of the class's results."

"I suppose you could be on to something. And it is nice to see the test got -something- right, at least." Megan pulled her tray back into position and resumed picking at her mashed potatoes. Thousands of potato people cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced as dams of solidified carbohydrates burst, sending rivers of reconstituted gravy roaring through their once peaceful villages. Those that survived the initial flooding, the mass hysteria that followed, not to mention the looting and riots that then came thereafter, cursed the fickleness of their heavenly creator. Her name, once joyously proclaimed from the capital city of Pomme de Terre to the majestic, skyward-reaching peaks of the Kartoffel Mountains, to the deep, lush Valley of the Horse-Bell Yam… Her name was now a curse, a lingering pestilence fit only for the ears of lepers.

"Oh, so when her own results come up as garbage, she thinks the test is crap, but when they confirm something she's been thinking all along, hey, all praise Vault-Tec."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, rein it in there, young lady. My mouth's plenty big enough as it is without you cramming some more words in there for me. I didn't say I thought the test was good for anything other than toilet paper, but you have to admit, it did get at least one person's future career path right. I mean, you're administrator material, no arguing about it. You've got the chops for it. Always have. I've known ever since my tenth birthday, when you helped my Dad put together that surprise party. Even if you -didn't- manage to swing getting me that date with Freddie Gomez."

"You don't even like boys." Amata threw her hands in the air in frustration, in clear appeal to the one Lord, one God for the strength of mind and body necessary to deal with this psychotic madwoman.

"Well, I didn't know that back -then.- I mean, how was I supposed to know at such a young age what manner of proclivities I would end up possessing?"

" 'Proclivities.' I'm pretty sure that's not an actual word, Meg."

"No, it is. I can bring up the dictionary function on my Pip Boy and show you if you don't believe me."

Amata raised a fork, upon whose tines had been impaled a sprig of her most hated of nemeses: broccoli. Like a sorceress casting spells of warding about her person, she waved the fork, dismissing Megan's desperate and pitiful attempts to prove her linguistic skills. "That's all right. I trust you."

"You trust me? Oh, Amata. So young, so naïve."

"I'm older than you."

"My youth belies my wisdom."

With a sigh of exasperation, and the makings of a migraine headache, the brunette started to get to her feet, her intent being to head for one of the cafeteria's Eat'o'tronic 5000's, for even the slimmest hope of escape from this nearby rift of teeming madness was welcome. "Ok, I'm going to get something to drink now because my brain is starting to hurt from talking to you."

Megan grinned, standing up herself and putting a hand on Amata's shoulder to gently nudge her back into her seat. "Sit. I'll go. What do you want, water?"

"Yeah."

"Heh. Figures. Booooring."

Amata fired back with a roll of the eyes that she had painstakingly researched, developed and then patented specifically for use on impudent Megans. "I suppose you're going to get a Nuka Cola for yourself?" She shook her head, sadly. "I swear, giving you more sugar is just flirting with disaster." A tiny shudder shot through her slender frame as the terrifying repercussions of her redheaded friend amped up on excessive amounts of artificial sweetener coursed through her brain like a stuttering nightmare.

Megan ignored the comment, instead smiling sweetly, one might say cherubically. "I'll be right back with your water."

"Why are you being so nice, anyway?" the other girl called after her, trying in vain to repress images of a fifty-foot tall Megan replete in her bright blue Vault 101 jumpsuit, stampeding through the Capital Wasteland, breathing gamma-radiation-laced death and spewing colorful invective… hurling both passenger buses and the occasional withering bon mot… casting down friend and foe alike with heavy-handed blows from her fists, after which she would cast aspersions upon their manhood. It was a most magnificent slaughter, stark and majestic, the likes of which the world had not seen since the terrifying specter of nuclear holocaust had threatened to extinguish the very flame of humanity as a species. Amata cringed in abject fear of it.

"Why are -you- being so suspicious?"

Her response came out deadpan flat, devoid of any form of emotion whatsoever. "Because it's either that or accept the fact that you're doing something nice. And then I'd have to deal with the Horsemen and the Rain of Fire and the End of Days."

That expertly polished gem of witty banter drew a laugh, and Megan went off to fulfill her oath of service, quickly procuring a bottle of water for her friend and a 20-ounce bottle of syrupy-sweet carbonated goodness for herself. She was just about to begin the long, arduous trek back to her table when three loud, unruly youths strode through the door of the cafeteria.

"Tunnel Snakes rule!

_Oh, Lord, not this bullshit again._

Conveniently, most of the adults that had been in the Vault's cafeteria had cleared out, leaving the room mostly empty save for the other teenagers that had been dismissed from Brotch's class after finishing their G.O.A.T. exams. As expected, none of them were particularly interested in getting in the way of Butch DeLoria, Wally Mack, or Paul Hannon, the so-called Tunnel Snakes – Vault 101's very own gang of street toughs slash general-purpose hoodlums.

It was amazing. Even living underground in a gigantic steel bunker, after the surface of the planet had been blanketed by atomic radiation, some things simply refused to change. This time their target was Amata. Contrary to popular belief, her status as the daughter of the Vault's Overseer didn't make her immune to this kind of harassment, it made her a popular target.

The Overseer himself was inviolable, beyond reproach; Amata, however, was not, and that made her an exceptionally convenient scapegoat. Had your food ration for the week cut again? Blame the Overseer's kid. Spoiled brat probably complained about how you and your buddies had gotten just a touch too rowdy during last night's card game. Have to work an extra shift tomorrow night? Must be the Overseer's little princess not wanting to haul her own weight and getting Daddy Dearest to pull some strings. Uppity bitch needs to get hers.

Never mind that the exact opposite was true – that the girl's father went far out of his way to make certain that everything she had, she'd earned, and that there was absolutely no possibility any serious accusations of nepotism could ever stick. There would be no teachers "fixing" her grades, no extra security details around her to make sure she wasn't bothered on her way to class. She wasn't even entitled to an extra helping of dessert at dinner. She got exactly what every other citizen in the Vault did, no more, no less – not that it mattered to those who were out to get her. It was just far too easy to continue blaming her for things that weren't in any way her fault, and far too easy for misanthropes like Butch and Wally and Paul to give her trouble just because they enjoyed picking on people who couldn't easily fight back.

Speaking of which, Butch had taken the seat directly across from her and was casually stealing her potato chips, reaching into the bag and taking one at a time. He'd bring the chip to his mouth, pop it in and chew, loudly, savoring the crunch even as she deliberately avoided his eyes and tried not to cringe away in revulsion as he practically slavered over every bite.

Retreat wasn't an option, either, since Paul had taken up a position behind her seat. He wasn't doing anything overtly threatening, just standing behind her chair, arms folded, making sure to block her exit. As for Wally, he'd taken Megan's seat, nudging her tray aside and leaning back in the chair, propping his feet up on the table and trying to look cool and casual. He succeeded only in looking like a royal jackass, but in the young man's defense, there was a very fine line between looking cool and just looking like a horse's posterior. As yet, Wally had not learned where that distinction lay, but Megan was sure that several years confined to a maximum security prison, perhaps spent primarily in "humble supplication" and under the "expert tutelage" of a man much larger than himself, would grant him all the wisdom he would need.

But returning to more immediate concerns, over by the food dispensers, Megan considered her own options. This wasn't the first time the Tunnel Snakes had decided to mess with her friend. It wouldn't be the last. But just because Amata was used to dealing with this kind of abuse, didn't make it right, and it certainly didn't give Butch and his goons license to keep on doing what they were doing. That meant she'd have to get involved somehow. The question was simply what form her involvement would take.

_Ok… there's three of them… and they're all way bigger than me. They'll take me apart if it comes down to a fight, and I can't count on Security coming in to break it up before Wally smacks the back of my nose up into my brain. And even if the cavalry does come to my 'rescue,' Dad's not going to be too happy with me if I have to spend -another- night in a holding cell. I told him cherry-bombing those toilets in the Section C Living Quarters was worth a week on half rations and two nights in the hoosegow, but I think he's losing his sense of humor. It's probably a side effect of the senility._

_Anyway, point is… I need to think this one through. Shouldn't be too hard, I mean, I've got advantages they don't. Like… like they're supposed to be a gang, and Butch is supposed to be in charge, but everyone knows that Wally's the real leader of the bunch. Or he thinks he is, anyway. I mean, on the face of things, they all let Butch make the decisions, but if anyone in that group has any real power, it's Mack._

_That's my in. That's how I'll drive a wedge into the group. I can do this, I can talk my way through this. I just have to talk to them, play them off each other a bit, get Paul and Wally to start questioning the wisdom of this whole thing… after all, it's probably Butch who decided to start things up with Amata. He's the one who's got the real grudge against her for some reason. If I can do that, I could probably split them up and-"_

Butch crunched down on another chip, then swallowed. When he was done, he leaned forward towards Amata, planting both of his hands, palms flat on the table. The suggestive sneer on his face was nauseating. "What's the matter?" he began, his tone falsely polite. He was trying to sound commiserative, but nobody was buying it. Not that Butch particularly cared if anyone fell for the ruse, of course. "Feeling lonely? Daddy couldn't bribe someone to go on a date with you? I could make you feel better." That little sneer on his face grew wider as he twisted the conversational knife at the end.

_Or, I could just beat the stuffing out of that arrogant, little twit right now. Better yet, how many knife stabs -does- it take to get to the center of a Butch De Loria? Let's find out. One… two… three… SCLORCH! Hmmm. Three…_

_No._

_No, no, NO._

_Try it, and they'll be picking your teeth out of the macaroni and cheese for the next week and a half. Then you'll have to get dentures, and before you know it, you'll be trading sweetroll recipes with Old Lady Palmer and playing Canasta with Grandma Taylor. No, like it or not, you're going to have to use your brain for this one. C'mon, the damned thing -should- work, your parents're both scientists, and unless modern genetics has turned out to be the biggest hoax since Duck & Cover was presented as a viable means of defense against nuclear attack, you should be able to think your way through this._

But while it was clear that Amata was not having an easy time of things, she certainly wasn't just about to sit back and await rescue like some fairy tale damsel, either. For one, she'd always claimed the glass slippers and such would make her feet hurt.

Putting on her best haughty smirk, she levered herself up out of her seat, nudging her chair backwards into Paul's ribs. "That's ok, Butch. For your information, I've actually got plans with Andy…" she said, referring to one of the Vault's ubiquitous Mr. Handy units – this particular robot being used for general engineering and maintenance duties. "He's more of a man than you'll ever be."

Megan smirked quietly to herself as little Miss Almodovar calmly retook her seat and Butch sputtered and turned red as a beet in response. Now was the time to make her move. Walking quickly back over to the table, she pulled up a chair next to Wally who promptly went about ignoring her until she deigned to speak to him. She turned, planting an elbow on the table and resting her temple on her closed fist. She smiled, trying to look friendly, though what she really wanted to do was give Wally a very comprehensive and up-close tour of the surface of the table.

"Good afternoon, Wallace." The fake cheer in her voice was so thick, one could cut it with a chainsaw.

"What do you want, McCulloch?" he grumbled in her general direction without even bothering to look at her.

"My, so formal. I just thought we should talk, is all."

"About what?"

"I was just curious as to how Butch managed to get you to go along with this. I mean, picking on the little kids? C'mon, right? Like you and Paul don't have better things to do with your time. I mean, I get that Butch calls the shots and he can get you guys to do whatever he wants, but-"

Wally dropped both feet to the floor and sat bolt upright in his chair; now, every ounce of his attention was on Megan, and he didn't look happy. Seething rage boiled behind his eyes, like a Yao Guai that had been fiercely accosted by a platoon of foes wielding pointed sticks. He glared at her, apparently trying to use his laser beam vision to set her aorta on fire. "What did you say?" His voice was a low, bass rumble from deep in his chest, the makings of a devastating seismic anomaly happening right before her very eyes. Oh, if only the Geo Sciences department could stop fiddling with their pocket protectors long enough to get some hard data on this.

"About you picking on little kids?"

"After that." Every word that came out of his mouth had to escape through a clenched jaw and gritted teeth, like ragged, emaciated prisoners crawling through hastily cut holes in a chain-link fence.

"About Butch getting you and Paul to do whatever he wants?"

Mack half-rose out of his seat and loomed over her, and for a second she wondered if this wasn't the worst idea she'd had since she'd decided it might be fun to loosen all the bolts on one of the toilets in the ladies' room in the eastern dormitories. He stabbed a finger right in between her breasts in an ancient, mystical martial arts technique widely known as the "Poke of Doom." Many had heard of it, for stories of its efficacy and frightfully deadly efficiency were plentiful, but few had seen it in action. Fewer still had lived to tell the tale. "That. Is. Bullshit. Butch doesn't tell Wally Mack what to do. Wally Mack is his own man."

She raised her hands meekly in surrender, though in the back of her mind she was wondering what book it was she'd read that mentioned referring to oneself in the third person was a sign of growing mental instability. "Hey, if you say so, Wally. Don't kill the messenger, ok? I'm just telling you what I heard. It's just… the word around the Vault is that you do everything Butch tells you to do."

And this was the risky part. Not that people hadn't been circulating these exact kinds of rumors, but truth or not, Wally might just choose to beat her up, anyway. She let out a little nervous chuckle. "And… I mean -everything.-"

His eyes widened and his cheeks turned red with fury. "What?! Who said-" His fists were clenched at his sides, but she was utterly convinced that, any moment now, he was going to start swinging, like a Tilt-a-Whirl that had come free from its moorings, and one of those fists was going to, somehow, "inexplicably" lodge itself in her eye socket.

Her father would most certainly not approve.

James was very much "old school," after all, and did not believe young boys should be sticking their appendages in his teenage daughter's orifices. Certainly not their hands in her ocular cavities. She would have to be very careful not to engender such an outcome.

"I don't know, I can't remember anyone in particular… it's just… you know how it is: people talk, people hear things. I mean, there you are, sitting in the cafeteria, eating your green eggs and Cram, and… well… you just hear things. Can't say as I know where or from whom I heard it, but… I heard it." She shrugged, playing the innocent to the best of her ability.

"This… this is bull. This is fucking bull," he grumbled. Then, with a decisive shake of his head, he slammed his open palm against the table. Amata jumped a little in her seat, and all across the cafeteria, heads turned to watch the sudden spectacle. "Yo, Tunnel Snakes! We're outta here!"

Butch looked over at him and blinked, his grudge with Amata temporarily forgotten. "What? Hey, we're not done here," he said, protesting feebly.

But Wally had gotten his gumption up, and in his fit of testosterone-fueled anger, coupled with a deep seated desire to prove that he was, indeed, the premier example of virility amongst the three Tunnel Snakes, he was not about to be gainsaid by a mere hairstylist wannabe as Butch. "Oh, we're done here."

"Uh… are you sure?" Butch still looked hesitant. A real leader would have exercised his power, possibly even challenged Wally for his impudence; chastised him. There would've been a fight, some hastily thrown punches, perhaps even a surprise knee assault upon the Mack family jewels. Some name-calling, insulting of mothers, or even the hurling of excrement. Instead, Butch was content to play the meeker: finding his shoes extremely interesting despite his having owned them for years. Apparently he'd just never had the opportunity to -look- at them before.

"Let's go, Paul!" Wally said, snapping his fingers and making for the door. He clearly expected his "minions" to fall in behind him.

"Um… all right… sure… let's go. Tunnel Snakes rule," Butch added, almost as an afterthought. "Er… don't think this is over, Daddy's Girl. And that goes for you too, twerp." He threw an arrogant sneer over in Megan's direction, but there was no heat to it; it was merely a parting jibe, a fleeting and desperate way to try and recover some of his lost manhood; what with Wally having absconded with most of it to begin with.

"Ah, Butch. He's such a charming lad," Megan said with a soft chuckle as the Tunnel Snakes departed, likely to purloin some lollipops from infants – a task more in keeping with their skills and general dispositions. "I dare say he'll make someone a good wife someday." With the three stooges safely gone, Megan resumed her previous seat and put an arm around her friend's shoulders, giving her a quick hug. "You ok?"

While she was grateful for her friend's assistance in ridding herself of the three accursed hooligans, the means by which Megan had done so tended to leave something to be desired. It was confrontational, inflammatory, and distinctly lacking in subtlety. But perhaps more importantly, the redhead's penchant for sticking her lightly freckled nose into places where it theoretically did not belong was bound to get her into all manner of trouble that she might very likely be hard pressed, if not completely unable, to extricate herself from. Simply put, Amata worried. "You really don't know how to keep your mouth shut, do you, Megan?" The Overseer's daughter punctuated the end of her question with a weary sigh.

"I do," Megan replied with an easy shrug before casually twisting off the top of her bottle of crisp, cold, refreshing and only mildly radioactive Nuka Cola – guaranteed to contain fewer than two hundred REM per bottle or receive a coupon for 5% off your next bone marrow transplant. "I do. It's just more fun not to." She smiled that devilishly charming smile of hers – a smile which was sure to break hearts the world over… or at least, the Vault over, seeing as how nobody ever left the Vault, if the propaganda was to be believed.

"I'm serious. One day, your mouth's gonna get you in a lot of trouble." Gone now were the jibes and the joking atmosphere, replaced with genuine concern for her friend's welfare. While Amata had grown accustomed to Megan's "unique" brand of humor, most people still found it patently infuriating. Worse still was what came out of the redhead's mouth when she was trying to be not funny, but deliberately antagonistic. Wars resulting in genocide had started over utterances less provocative than some of the sentiments she chose to give voice to.

"I'm sure. It's just, my mouth gets me out of more trouble than it gets me into."

"Oh. Ew. Wait a second. What does that even mean, anyway?"

Megan chuckled softly and gave Amata's shoulders another friendly squeeze. "You were the one who said 'Ewww.' This implies that you have some idea of what I was talking about. Doesn't it?"

"Not really. It's just, whenever you talk, I assume you're suggesting something dirty."

"Well, ok, that -is- a pretty safe bet."

"Ugh. See?" The brunette rolled her eyes and groaned.

"Amata, I'm starting to get the impression that you think I'm too abrasive…"


	2. No One Ever Leaves

**Notemeal: (More nutritious than author's notes, more informative than ordinary oatmeal!)**

_1. A quick acknowledgment and thanks to those who stopped by to read and comment on Chapter 1. Much obliged._

_2. This bugger is long. My apologies, but I felt it would really lose a lot of its impact if broken up into two smaller sections._

_3. Have fun. Fun is mandatory._

_4. (Note added 2/26/09: Some scene revisions made in light of input from a couple of readers. Thanks for your thoughts, guys.)_

-----

Entry B, Subsection C-4: No One Ever Leaves

"Well, what did -you- think we were going to do with the coconuts, silly?"

They were on a small island somewhere in the south Pacific: one of those tiny, unnamed, uncharted islands unspoiled by human beings. Unspoiled, that is, until now. The manner of self-indulgence the two of them were exhibiting probably counted as spoiling, and if it didn't, it certainly should have, what with the obscenely large amounts of raw decadence on display here – decadence that took the form of a massive banquet laden with mysterious island delicacies, a cluster of fruity alcoholic beverages, not to mention the decidedly skimpy attire the two of them were wearing.

Especially Amata. That swimsuit was positively scandalous, the way it only just barely covered her-

"Meg."

"Hmm?"

"This place… is… it's… it's just amazing. I've… I've never seen anything like it." And indeed she hadn't. Indeed neither of them had. Living in the Vault their entire lives, with nothing but barren, gray, lifeless walls to pass for scenery… breathing canned, recycled air and eating tasteless, dehydrated and rehydrated food. It was a poor way to live, especially when matched against such unrivaled luxury as this.

This… this was the real world, a tropical paradise, a true heaven on Earth, a miracle in its most potent and tangible form. The Bible's book of Genesis spoke of a Garden of Eden, a lush, verdant land where all manner of life thrived in harmony with one another. Truly, this was it, and somehow, through some means beyond all human reckoning, these two young girls had found themselves in that paradise. It was a gift without equal, an incredible blessing – like a young woman hearing for the first time those three magnificent words every young woman longs to hear: "It's not gonorrhea."

"Did I not tell you?" Megan was wearing her customary smug "Didn't I tell you? Because I'm pretty sure I told you," look.

"Yes, you told me."

"Behold my wisdom – wisdom to rival the great kings of old. Wisdom enough to challenge even that of Solomon himself! Look what I have provided for us. A tropical paradise for our very own, teeming with fertile green, lush with exotic life. And let us not forget the naked native girls who stand ready to attend to our every need. These fresh-faced, nubile young women in the flower of their youth – see how they await our beck and call?"

"It's hard not to notice," Amata responded with a murmur and a slight roll of the eyes. "But while you were at it, couldn't you… I don't know, maybe have gotten us some handsome naked native -boys,- too?"

"No. Anyway, we need but ask and these young ladies shall assist us in carving up these succulent coconuts so that we may hand feed them to the flamingos." While the two young ladies were lounging comfortably in their twin hammocks, their cadre of native servants had harvested for them a small pile of fresh coconuts. Said pile stood ready a short distance away, the innocent brown spheres resting one atop another atop another awaiting their destiny – whether that destiny was to be used as ordnance in some manner of horrific inter-island war, or, more likely, to be savagely slaughtered and eviscerated… their tasty, tender flesh cannibalized for food in a foolish and ultimately doomed attempt to sate the voracious hunger of the savage, ravenous pink birds that inhabited the island.

"Flamingos are mean, Meg. They bite."

"So do the naked native girls," Megan replied with a grin and a wink. "With any luck."

Amata snorted. "Listen, do me a favor?"

"Anything, most radiant one. What dost thou desire?"

There was a sudden note of urgency in Amata's voice, and Megan's hammock shook, as if a sudden squall had picked up. But the sky was clear, and as far as she could tell, there was no wind. The discrepancy jarred her. The words the other girl spoke jarred her even more. "You need to wake up."

"I'm sorry?"

-----

"Wake up! You've gotta wake up! Now!"

A small part of Megan's soul collapsed like a flan in a cupboard as images of that tiny sliver of paradise disappeared into hazy memory – the warm, life-giving sunlight replaced by the sickly glow of fluorescent lamps. The salty tang of the island's air had been swapped for the same stale, recycled Vault air she'd been breathing all her life. And instead of the relaxing sound of ocean waves breaking against the shore, there was the harsh, keening wail of a klaxon, and-

_A klaxon? Wait, that was new._

"A-amata?" W-what? Oh, hey… I… I was just having a dream about you. It had coconuts and everything, and-" Halfway through her sentence, Megan began to swing her legs out of bed, bare feet making contact with the cold tile of the floor. She'd been feeling a little under the weather, so she'd knocked off a little early from her daily work shift in the Vault's reactor room, then returned to the small, spartan quarters she shared with her father. She'd kicked off her shoes, promptly taken a nose dive into her bunk, and lost the next hour and a half (though it had only felt like five minutes) to that crazy dream. And now, Amata was standing over her, shaking her awake, her face pinched into a mask of fear, sorrow and a whole host of other emotions Megan couldn't identify.

Though she was pretty sure she recognized anger in there as well. A half second later as her best friend clenched her hand into a fist and drove it into her shoulder with excessive (Think "hunting molerats with hand grenades" levels of excessive) force, she realized that she had been quite correct about the anger thing.

"Ewwwww, gross! Goddamnit, Meg! This is -not- the time for joking around!" Amata's voice was strained – strained, and quite possibly, even on the verge of panic.

_She's hitting me, why is she hitting me? This is starting to remind me a lot of Beatrice's kinky fetish films. The really creepy ones with the whips and the chains and the midgets._

"Yeah, I'm getting that!" Megan protested, rubbing her sore shoulder. "What's with the hitting?!"

Amata shook her head as if she could shake the stray thoughts from her mind with such a simple gesture. Unintuitive as the action was, it seemed to work, as the words leapt from her mouth in a rush. "Jonas… Jonas is dead, your Dad's gone, and my father's men are looking for you! I flooded the Security channels with some false reports saying you were spotted over in D-Block, but they'll get wise before too long. We've got to get you out of here!" Even before she'd finished those sentences, she was reaching over to the far wall to retrieve her friend's boots. Time was of the essence, and it would be exceptionally humiliating for the redhead to be apprehended because she took too long donning her footwear.

Unfortunately for them both, news of this sort is never taken well, even for those prepared to hear it; Megan most certainly was -not- prepared. She'd seen Jonas hale and hearty a mere two hours ago, just before she'd gone off-shift. He'd challenged her to a game of chess. He always won (She had the strategic sense of a brahmin farmer,) but it never mattered to her. She merely took pleasure in the simple joys of spending time with a cherished friend. And now he was dead and she had not the slightest notion why. There was an immense… disconnect in her mind that she just could not reconcile. Her tongue tripped over the words and her version blurred as her eyes suddenly found themselves misting over. "Jonas? D-dead? H-how?"

Amata had promised herself she wouldn't cry – she couldn't afford to, not when the situation was so dire, and not when she knew her friend would need her. To her credit, she held the tears back – but it was a close thing. True, she was nineteen years old; true, she was an adult – but one who'd lived her entire life sheltered inside an underground vault, hidden away from all the horrors of the real world, "protected" from the predations of others. She'd never witnessed a death by violence before, and certainly not the death of someone she'd known personally. "I… some of the security personnel. My father, he… he sent them to ask Jonas where your Dad went." She trailed off, and shivered, even though the Vault remained its normal, perfectly pleasant seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit.

She reached out a hand, finding her friend's and folding her fingers around it. Megan's hand was cold and unresponsive, almost lifeless as the other girl sat on her bunk, shocked by the sudden, horrific news she'd just received but unable to turn away as the details were relayed to her. She knew the full revelation would sicken her to her core; she knew how ghastly it would be, but something deep within her refused to retreat; it simply had to know.

Amata continued her litany, her voice sounding empty and hollow. "He wouldn't tell them, of course. So they yelled at him, threatened him… and when he still wouldn't talk," she swallowed back a sudden lump in her throat, "One of them punched him in the stomach. And then another hit him with a baton. In the back of the knee. They… they kept asking him questions, but he wouldn't answer, so they just kept hitting him. And after a while, they just stopped bothering with the questions. They didn't…" She sniffled, looking up at Megan who was only staring blankly at her, eyes wide and filled with tears she couldn't yet shed. "They didn't seem to care about the information, anymore, they just kept punching him and kicking and swinging their truncheons at his head. After a while, Jonas stopped moving, and… and…"

"That… that's enough, Amata." Megan's voice was a ragged whisper as she held up her free hand and begged the brunette to stop.

"God, I'm so sorry, Meg. They wouldn't stop. I couldn't stop them." She didn't know what else to say or to do, so she leaned over and pulled her friend into a hug, but Megan was so far gone she couldn't even hug back. Her thoughts were a jumbled mess. Nothing made sense.

One of her closest friends was dead. And her father? Gone? Disappeared? Impossible. He… he would never just leave without… it just couldn't be. Never mind that she'd been told all her life that no one could even leave the Vault, that all who were born there were destined to die there as well, but for her father to go without even telling her, without even -warning- her…

Her head was filled with questions. How? Why?

But she had no answers. No answers and no clue as to what to do next-

"Meg."

Amata's voice cut through her musings and she looked up. There was concern etched plain as day upon her best friend's face. But she couldn't look her in the eyes, her gaze instead dropping to her hands – hands which trembled as she stared blankly into her palms for several long, hard moments – moments that she likely did not really have. "Amata, I… I don't know what to -do.-"

"Meg, your Dad's gone. He left the Vault. My Dad's looking for him… and he's looking for you, too. It's not safe for you here. You… you have to leave the Vault, too."

"That's crazy-person talk, Amata. I mean… no one. Ever. Leaves. Isn't that what your father's been trying to tell us with all those propaganda speeches all these years?"

"Your father must've found a way, Meg," Amata insisted. "Nobody's been able to find him, so he must've found a way out. And… and I think I know how he did it. It's just… he didn't…" She frowned darkly, something about the entire situation finally standing out amidst all the other nonsensical aspects (of which there were many) that formed the whole. "He didn't tell you about any of this?"

Megan shook her head, dejected. "No."

"I… I'm sorry… maybe… maybe Jonas was supposed to fill you in, or maybe your Dad just didn't want to get you involved at all. Seeing how turned upside down the whole place is, I don't think I can blame him. He probably figured that if he kept you in the dark, he could get away clean. But fact is things didn't turn out that way, and whatever his reasons, we don't have time to figure them out now. You need to get ready to move."

"Ok," said Megan as she slipped on a pair of socks and then began to lace up her boots. She was still wearing her utility jumpsuit, so she didn't have much to do to get herself fully dressed. "You know, this whole giving orders thing suits you. Told you the G.O.A.T. was right about you."

"How can you make jokes at a time like this?"

She flashed the brunette a wan smile. "It's laugh or cry, Amata. Laugh or cry. And I really can't afford to cry right now." She took a deep breath as she stood up off her bunk and brushed a wrinkle out of her utilities. "What next?"

"Next? I give you this." Amata slowly and carefully reached into her pocket and pulled forth a hunk of metal that had been painted matte-black. Compact as it was, it still looked impossibly huge in her small hands.

"Jesus Christ, where did… where did you get a -gun?!-" Megan stared at the pistol in wide-eyed disbelief. It certainly wasn't the first N99 Pistol she'd ever seen – the handguns were standard issue for Vault Security personnel. She'd even fired one on several occasions during the "civil defense classes" offered by the Vault's "Deadly Weapons and You" program. But this was something different. This gun was being given to her and her alone. More than that, she was expected to kill with it.

"Lifted it and a couple of spare ammo clips from my Dad's dresser. He won't miss them. Take them. You… you might need them."

Megan tried to push the weapon away. It hadn't hit her yet. Despite the fact that the Overseer's men had killed, and that they were likely out to kill -her,- the idea of taking someone's life, even in defense of her own… it just didn't register. She was too much her father's daughter, too much a believer in "First do no harm," to easily accept a deadly weapon into her custody. Shooting radroaches with a BB gun was one thing. She had taken a shine to that as a wee lass. But this was something else entirely.

Amata understood. She was no killer; she was no murderer, and she knew as well that her friend was neither of these things. But Megan had not seen what the Overseer's lackeys had done to Jonas Palmer. She had. And deep down she knew that a similar fate awaited her closest friend should those men catch her unprepared and underequipped. There was no give in either her position or her voice. "You have to take it, Meg. You have to."

Contrary to every instinct she possessed, Megan's hand reached for the pistol. She didn't want it; somewhere in the back of her mind she understood what taking it would mean. Once she had it, she would feel compelled to use it. And once she used it, she would… she would be… different. And yet, there was no choice – her chances of getting out of the Vault alive without some kind of weapon were worse than slim. Her fingers closed around the pistol's grip, their grasp somewhat shaky as she tucked the gun into a pocket. The spare magazines went into another pocket. One could say what he or she liked about Vault-Tec standard issue jumpsuits, but they were, at the very least, utilitarian. Roomy pockets. "Thanks," she said, though she wasn't sure she really felt all that grateful. "I'll use it only as a last resort. I promise."

Amata nodded solemnly. "Ok. Listen, there's goons stationed in the Atrium, so you're going to have to take another route to get to the Vault door. I know a way. My father told me about it a long time ago. Even Security doesn't know about it. Just him and me. It's a secret escape tunnel that leads straight from his office to the exit…"

-----

From the living quarters, up past the cafeteria, shortcut through the classroom sections, then past the infirmary, and now up into the administration wing. The route she'd taken had been infested with radroaches. The entire Vault had been infested with radroaches as a matter of fact. Probably why her father had chosen now to make his move. How the little beggars had gotten in was anyone's guess, but their presence made for a good distraction. With all of the Vault's citizens under lockdown orders and the security personnel tied up fighting off the swarm, James had likely been relatively free to move about the Vault and make his escape. It had been a good plan, she mused. But not a perfect one. There had been things he hadn't expected. And people had paid the price for his mistakes.

She knelt down by Jonas' body. Deep down, she knew there was nothing more she could do for him, but part of her refused to just move on, to leave without so much as stopping to say goodbye. Jonas had pretty much always been a part of her life. He'd practically helped raise her. He'd been her father's assistant, too, but more than that, he'd been his friend… and hers, as well: kind eyes behind a pair of horn-rimmed eyeglasses, a warm smile for her during a long night watching dials and gauges in the reactor room. He'd helped Dad fix up that BB-gun she'd gotten for her tenth birthday, traded away a whole month's worth of dessert coupons to get her the super-rare issue of Drake Tungsten, Chrono-Cowboy she'd always wanted, and now he was gone, his presence erased as if it had never been, for reasons she might never understand.

It felt so… so -wrong,- a crime against the natural order of things. But it was a wrong that she was powerless to right, and that feeling, that knowledge that she was helpless to fix this injustice – that left her feeling both empty, but at the same time, angry. She wanted to find the people who had done this, make them pay, mete out some kind of punishment for their crimes. No one had appointed her judge, no authority had selected her as jury. Certainly, no one had empowered her as executioner, but it was a role she was suddenly all too happy to play, as insane and dangerous as such thinking was.

She shook her head, giving herself a badly needed moment to let her temper cool. Her father had taught her better. Justice was one thing, revenge was another entirely. But more importantly, she had no time to spare for either. Not when she was being hunted the way she was. Reaching down, she gently closed Jonas' eye – the other had swollen shut. It was a small gesture, but all she could spare for him with the dwindling time she had left to her.

Even as part of her paid her respects, however, there was another part of her busy attempting to assess what had happened. That part of her spoke in her father's voice, but it was not the voice that had sung her to sleep as a baby, or that had read her bedtime stories as a toddler. It was not the tender, loving voice of a father, but the voice James had used when he was lecturing her on something: it was the voice of a clinically detached doctor.

_Severe contusions consistent with blunt force trauma. Multiple skull fractures. His eye socket has been fractured as well._

_Amata was right, _she thought to herself as the realization of what she'd been told earlier finally settled in. She'd had a hard time believing it, then, but here, now, confronted with the evidence right before her very eyes, there was no denying what had occurred.

_They beat him to death, the bastards._

Her fists clenched at her sides as once again she felt that sense of rage, that desire to just lash out at the persons responsible for this atrocity, and once again she had to fight to quell that emotion – it would do her no good now. Instead, she stood and rushed over to Jonas' desk, pulling one of the lower drawers completely off its rails. The drawer itself was actually shorter than it should've been, but it'd been purposely modified to conceal a tiny hiding space just behind it. Jonas had used it to hide little bits of contraband, things like… well, like comic books or illegal homemade vodka, but she wagered it held far more meaningful cargo this time.

And she was right. There was an unlabeled holodisc tucked away in the secret compartment. She had to twist a little bit to get her arm in far enough to grab it, but once she had it, she popped it into her Pip Boy and copied the contents over, then stashed the disc in her pocket. She'd check out the contents later.

-----

The sound of hurried footsteps clambering down the hallway drew her attention and she ducked into a little niche in the corridor, trying to stay out of sight, and more importantly, trying not to panic. The hall was dim, lit only by blood-red emergency lighting, which helped her remain invisible to the men searching for her, but it only added to the fear clenching her stomach in a vice-grip. This wasn't the Vault she'd grown up in. It was so different from the place she knew, with its too-bright lights that hurt her eyes if she stared right into them, its dull, boring corridors, and its equally drab people who went about their business each and every day without the barest hint of excitement in their lives. Now she had more excitement than she could want, and the Vault that had seemed so familiar to her, that had been her home for her entire life was a Chamber of Horrors, with men out to get her.

She held her breath as the footsteps faded away then gingerly eased her way back out into the corridor proper, one hand braced against the wall as she carefully felt her way back out into the hallway. She stayed low to the ground, the handgun Amata had given her clutched in her hand. She hadn't yet had to use it, and part of her wished she wouldn't have to. Part of her still hoped beyond all hope that she could get through this without having to hurt anyone – well, more than a few bumps or bruises, at any rate. It was a naïve belief, and she knew it, but she'd lost so much so quickly, and she clung to any desperate hope, no matter how slim.

Voices reached her ears and she stopped short as she passed one of the security stations – the main one, in fact. Most of the Vault's security personnel were deployed, of course – searching for her, fighting off the radroaches, or enforcing the lockdown, so she'd expected their headquarters to be empty, but for whatever reason it wasn't.

The door to the room had been left open just a tiny crack, allowing her to hear at least two men inside. Their voices were gruff, but their agitation was clear. There was a third voice as well, this one a lot younger sounding and a lot higher pitched: clearly a woman's; it was laced with fear.

"I don't… I don't -know- where she is, all right? Why are you even -looking- for her, anyway?!"

_Oh, God, no._

Megan crept forward slowly and put her eye to the crack in the door. Through it she could see exactly what was going on inside: Amata, her closest friend in all the world, was seated in a chair. Two men loomed over her. She recognized both – not hard, really, seeing as how the first was the Overseer.

If it had been anyone else, Megan might have been appalled, but her opinion of the "man who sheltered them all from the horrors of the world outside" had sunk so low over the years that she was no longer surprised that he could do something like this even to his own daughter. Encouraging one of his henchmen to "interrogate" her? Why, that was nothing unusual – just ordinary, run of the mill, everyday business. After all, she almost certainly possessed pertinent knowledge regarding the whereabouts of that exceedingly dangerous fugitive that was running loose in the Vault, and for the good of all the Vault's citizens, he simply had to have that information, regardless of cost. It was just good public policy. Like constant surveillance. Curtailing of basic human freedoms. Genocide. Mass sterilization efforts. Widespread genetic manipulation of an unwitting population. You know, the good stuff.

As for the other man, Megan knew him, too – there were few enough people living in the Vault that most people could at least manage to match everyone's face to a name. But not only that, she'd had enough run-ins with this particular thug in a uniform to last her entire life. Unfortunately.

Steven Mack was Wally's older brother. That alone should have been all anyone needed to say about his pedigree. He was a bully, plain and simple, and like many bullies who eventually live long enough, he'd decided to turn his childhood hobby into a marketable job skill. Apparently, life as a Vault 101 Security Officer agreed with Steve. He got to administer all the beatings he wanted, and it was all perfectly sanctioned by the Overseer and his administration. Nothing quite like getting official authorization to hassle people and even smack 'em a few times. Now he was threatening Amata. With a truncheon.

Well, that dog was just not gonna hunt, as the phrase went.

"C'mon, kid, you're not fooling anyone here. You're her best friend, everyone knows it. Witnesses saw you leaving A-Block, which is where McCulloch and her Dad are quartered, -and- we know it was your access code that was used to flood the SecTac channel with all those false reports on her location. We got you cold, little lady, so here's an idea: why don't you just tell us where she is…" Steven tapped the end of his baton against his open palm in a gesture he was fond of using on everyone from recalcitrant drunks to kids accused of swiping candy bars. "…and I don't have to make this ugly."

Crouched by that door, watching her friend being threatened, Megan was filled with an overwhelming urge to assail that pitiful excuse for a security guard with… sharp, pokey things. Many sharp, pokey things. To shove them into his eyes, his ears, underneath his fingernails… into far more vulnerable and… softer… areas. But the urge quickly passed, replaced instead with something else – an emotion she relished far less: fear. And not fear for herself, but fear for Amata.

Mack was leaning forward, using his height advantage to try and intimidate the brunette, and for the most part, it was working – a little too well. The girl was flinching back in her chair, but they'd made the mistake of leaving her hands free, and she was getting close to panicking. Though normally quite level-headed (She was far more even-keeled than Megan herself was, for example, as evidenced by that quick and shameful flirtation Megan had just had with the pokey objects concept,) Amata had never been in a situation like this before, and this was beyond anything she'd ever experienced. She was drastically out of her element and it showed. She was getting very close to doing something rash. And that… could have some very dangerous consequences, especially if her hand made it all the way to the holster at Mack's hip…

Which left Megan no choice but to intervene. She hit the release on the door and simply sauntered on in. She wasn't even sure what the hell she was going to do, but she'd heard an old saying once: "Dazzle them with brilliance. If that doesn't work, riddle them with gunfire." She was hoping to do the first, but expecting to fall back on the second and dreading the eventuality.

"I got another idea, Stevie," she said as she entered the room, her pistol pointed squarely at Mack's chest. Her voice didn't waver, but it took all the bravado she had (and some she had pilfered from… somewhere) to pull off such a feat. "Why don't you back off and I don't turn your head into a soup bowl?"

Amata's head jerked to the side, turning so she could fix her gaze upon the sudden arrival of her friend. She sputtered, clearly surprised to see the redhead standing right there as if nothing out of the ordinary were taking place. The end of the world had come (again) and she was merely standing there, nonchalant as ever. "M-Meg? W-what-"

"Get out of here, Amata." Megan urged her to go, not even sparing her a second glance. The Overseer wasn't that much of a threat: he wasn't armed, and he was standing further away. Steven Mack on the other hand was a good deal nearer, he had a weapon in his hands, and he'd been trained in how to use it. Not to mention his inherent love of violence and the height and weight advantage to make full use of that passion for inflicting pain and misery.

"What are you doing here?"

She couldn't afford to take her eyes off either man, but she had to come up with some kind of answer, if only to get Amata out of the room and to safety. There were certain portions of Megan's brain, portions whose development had been strictly dictated by immeasurably complex sequences of genetic code… the neurons within these segments of her brain fired, causing her mouth to move, her vocal cords to contract, and words emerged. "Your Dad and his lackeys didn't get my invitations for afternoon tea, so I figured I'd come by personally and let 'em know before the scones got cold. Now _get out of here._ Go. I'll take care of this."

"But-"

"I'll handle it, I promise. Just go."

Amata nodded quietly and carefully stood up from the chair. She eyed Mack warily and backed away from him, then shot her father a vicious glare before slipping past Megan and exiting the room. She disappeared down the hallway, her footsteps fading quickly. A few moments after she'd gone, the Overseer spoke.

"Thank you for keeping her out of this."

Megan snorted. "Are you kidding me? -You- dragged her into this. For God's sake, you were about to have one of your men beat her for information on where I was. No, I didn't do any of this for you. I did this so my best friend doesn't have to live with the horror of having shot two men on her conscience, one of whom was her own father." The corner of her mouth curled downwards in a wicked sneer, and her brow furrowed. The girl was Irish, make no mistake about that, and she had one vicious temper. She normally kept it in check, but there were times when she absolutely refused to rein it in. This was one of those times.

"Shot us? With what? She didn't have a gun," Mack said, taking a step back from the barrel of Megan's pistol but waving the end of his baton around in a dismissive fashion. Even staring down the barrel of a loaded weapon, he was still a shining example of the "cocky security guard," secure in his own self-importance and his place in the Vault hierarchy.

Megan's glower quickly turned into a cruel and heartless smile, devoid of any true humor whatsoever. There was nothing but malice in that grin. She'd become a bloodthirsty predator, intent on devouring the security guard's heart – assuming that was, that he had one. The proverbial jury was still in deliberations. "Didn't she? You wanna check your holster, Mack?"

He did so, and found that the small strap used to keep the gun butt secured had been unfastened. And the gun itself… was gone. "Wha- what the-?" His hand patted the empty weapon holster as if doing so would somehow, through some miracle of the virgin Mary, bring the wayward pistol back to its home. It, of course, did no such thing, though it did earn him an amused snort and a look of scorn from Megan.

"We… we wouldn't have harmed her," the Overseer insisted, holding his hands out, palms forward to try and appear as non-threatening as possible, "we just needed to make her understand how serious the whole matter was. With the disappearance of your father, and this situation with the radroaches, the whole Vault has been thrown into chaos. We needed to find you, and now that we have, this whole… unfortunate business can be resolved peacefully."

_Ever the diplomat…_ she scoffed, nearly choking on a sudden rush of bile into her throat. _"Unfortunate business" my pasty, white ass… just like a politician. Enacting a Vault-wide manhunt, sending your goons out to round up people to "question," sanctioning murder… all of it just "unfortunate business." Anything else you'd care to put a nice, pleasant, little spin on? Stick a little happy face on that nuclear holocaust we had about a couple of hundred years back and term it a "minor inconvenience?"_

"That's rich," she said with a threatening wave of her handgun. "You hunt me, my father, my friends, and you want to resolve this 'peacefully?' Make it all go away? People are _dead,_ you idiot! You can't just sweep that under the rug, as convenient as that might be for you!" She shook her head emphatically, her nostrils flaring as she slowly aimed the gun at the Overseer, then at his lackey and then back. "So, no, I don't think we're going to do this your way, I think we're going to do this mine. And you want to know what my way is? My way is, I'm giving you boys a time out. You're going in that there cell, and you're going to sit in there and shut your goddamn mouths. You catch my drift? You picking up what I'm putting down? Get it? Got it? Good. You first, Stevie." She made a sharp motion with her gun towards the door of the holding cell.

"Don't call me 'Stevie.'"

She raised the gun and fired, sending a bullet deliberately past Mack's ear where it embedded itself harmlessly into the wood of a bookshelf behind him. She shifted her aim a few inches over, sighting the gun up directly with his forehead. Though this was the first time she'd ever fired a gun in anger, and by all rights, it should've scared her witless, she was running on anger and adrenaline now, everything else just fading into background noise. Her hand didn't waver in the slightest as she held the weapon on Mack. "Important safety tip, Stevie. Don't backtalk the girl with the gun. Inside. Now."

He looked a little shaken from the close call with the bullet, but not shaken enough to refrain from sending waves of white hot death from his eyes as he slowly and carefully stepped through the door from the main Security office into the holding cell.

"There we go," she said. "Now, if you'd be so kind as to take those handcuffs you're so fond of using and secure yourself to the bunk? Both hands, please, Stevie. Pretend you're on a date." She flashed him a smug grin as he locked one end of the cuffs around his wrist, slipped the chain around the end of the bedpost, and then locked the other end of the cuffs to his other wrist. He rattled the handcuffs to show they were solidly locked.

That just left the Overseer to deal with. He, however, wouldn't get off quite so easily. Slowly, Megan turned to face him, and the barrel of her pistol turned with her, settling upon his chest as if it belonged there. To his credit, he didn't flinch, didn't even acknowledge the fact that she could kill him without even a second thought. He was made of stern stuff, she had to admit. But then again, he had to be: his daughter had certainly gotten her grit from somewhere, and it couldn't have just been from her mother. But whatever grudging respect she had for the man, he was a murderer. Perhaps worse, he was a tyrant, and there was very little keeping her from simply putting a bullet in him and being done with the whole godawful mess.

"Looks like it's just you and me, Alphonse," she said, addressing him by his given name. Nobody ever really used it. He'd been sitting "in the big chair" for so long that almost no one knew him as anything other than his title. But she wasn't about to show him any deference. Not now, not ever again. "You know, if I had more time…" she said, and her voice had dropped to a fierce whisper. It was barely audible over the emergency sirens still blaring throughout the rest of the Vault. "I owe you a whole lot of pain and suffering for what you did to Jonas." Her eyes were cold and hard, the images of what she had seen swimming up in front of her – her friend lying dead on the floor of his office, savagely beaten by thugs this man standing in front of her had dispatched. "That man never did anything to hurt anyone, and you had him butchered. For what? Because he -might- have known where my Dad went? Because he -might- have known where I was? Just for that, I should make you -bleed.-"

Her finger tightened on the trigger. So easy. It would be -so- easy. One squeeze. Quick. Simple. Another body on the ground, and a senseless death avenged…

But it wasn't really that simple, was it?

Was it -ever- really that simple?

No. She supposed it never was.

She wasn't naïve enough to believe that killing was never justified, but she couldn't lie to herself, either. If she pulled the trigger now, it wouldn't be about justice, it would be about satisfying her own need for revenge, her own need to see someone pay for the wrongs that had been done to her. It was selfish, and it went against everything she'd ever been taught. "I -should- make you bleed," she continued, "but you're lucky. My father, for all his faults, is a kind man. He'd never want me to do something like that. Not even to the likes of you." She lowered the gun, then, not enough to encourage the Overseer to try anything, but just enough to make it clear she wasn't going to kill him – at least not at that moment. She chuckled, a bit sadly, part of her disappointed that she wasn't going to be able to make the bastard pay for what he'd done, part of her worried that he'd only go on to do worse things in the future… and part of her savoring what she was about to do next.

"You know, he always said it was the mark of a great and noble soul to show mercy." At that point she did put the gun away, tucking it back into one of her jumpsuit's pockets. But in the same motion, she closed the short distance between her and the Overseer, moving impossibly quick – far too quick for the slowing reflexes of someone of his advancing age to counter. Her knee caught him right between the legs, driving forward and upward with all the rage and pain she could muster – and there was a lot of it.

She stepped back from him as he collapsed to the ground with a strangled gasp. He groaned as she nudged his shoulder with her toe and rolled him over onto his back. His hands were cupped about his groin and his face was contorted with pain and part of her drew a sick sense of satisfaction from seeing him suffer that way.

_Ok, so I didn't take -all- of Dad's lectures to heart._

"So I'm not great," she said as she retrieved another set of handcuffs from a storage locker and began dragging the Overseer into the cell. She took his hands (he wasn't feeling up to resisting) and bound them to another one of the cot's bedposts. "I'll settle for good." She stood up after making sure the handcuffs were secure and headed for the door, but stopped midstride, turned and gave Alphonse (who was still lying curled up on the floor, groaning miserably) a sharp kick to the ribs. He yelped, and she shrugged. "I'm all right."

-----

_Overseer's Office_

_Vault 101_

Megan found Amata at the door to the Overseer's Office, down on one knee, a hairpin in each hand and a tiny flashlight gripped between her teeth. Her fingers worked back and forth as she tried without success to get the lock open. One of the pins snapped, and she swore. Briefly. Comprehensively. Filthily. Not that the words made any sense, with the end of the flashlight keeping her tongue from moving properly, but it was the thought that counted. She sighed in frustration, turning and resting her back against the wall, burying her head in the palm of her hand.

"Hey," Megan said, quietly so as not to startle her.

She was startled anyway, her head picking up so quickly she thunked the back of it against the wall behind her.

"Ow," Meg chuckled, but she also winced sympathetically. She'd hit her own head tons of times – it was a wonder she had any brain cells left. Come to think of it, there were many who'd argue she ran out years ago.

"M-my father…" Amata began, the sharp pain radiating from the back of her skull temporarily forgotten as her thoughts leapt to more important (more important for her, at any rate) matters. "Is he-"

The redhead crouched down and patted her friend's knee. "He's… ok… kinda."

The use of the qualifier drew Amata's attention and her eyes widened. "What did you-"

"I kneed your Dad in the balls. He'll live. He won't be happy… well, he's never happy, but you get my point... anyway, long story short, he's still breathing."

Amata nodded and then chuckled sadly. She squeezed the hand Megan had rested upon her knee. "You always did have a way with people."

"Yes, I -am- quite the adorable misanthrope, aren't I?" Her jocular smile faded almost instantly. "Did they hurt you?"

"No. But they were gonna."

There wasn't all that much to say to that. Megan had seen for herself what had been going on, and after what had happened to Jonas, it wasn't that much of a stretch to picture… well, to picture…

She shook her head. Things -hadn't- gone that way; she'd made sure of it, and there was no point in filling her brain with "could-have-beens" at a time like this. "You know… you could… you could come with me."

Amata managed a small, wan smile; she shook her head. "I can't."

"Look, I know it's scary out there, but… maybe with the two of us…"

"It's not that… I'm not afraid… I should be, but I'm not. Comes from spending too much time around you, I guess," she commented, punctuating her statement with a sharp laugh. "It's just… look at this place. Look at what's happened. The Vault's a mess. Someone… someone's gotta stay behind, try and talk some sense into my father. No one else can do it, no one else even wants to try…"

"Can you blame them? The man nearly had his goons beat information out of you… and you're his daughter, for crying out loud. And… and then what they did to Jonas…" Her protests died on her lips; it was as if her voice had simply abandoned her.

"I… I know. Being the daughter of the Overseer doesn't mean a damn thing around here, I know that… but… but I can't run. Just like you can't stay. You need to go find your Dad, and I… I need to try and -save- mine."

There didn't seem to be much point in trying to change her mind. As stubborn as Megan could be, Amata had determination unmatched. She'd made her decision, and no matter how much Megan disagreed with it, no matter how much she feared for her friend's safety – even more than for her own, if the truth were to be told, years of experience had taught her that there was only one thing to do once Amata had made up her mind: back her up, or get the hell out of her way. It was a quality she both admired and that drove her absolutely up-the-wall crazy. "Just like you to play the hero," she said with a rueful chuckle.

"'s what you get for letting me borrow all your back issues of Grognak the Barbarian."

-----

Amata's fingers flashed over the computer keyboard, and her eyes darted from left to right and back as green text flicked rapidly across the black screen. She let out a low whistle and ejected another disc from the terminal's drive, sliding it across the desk to Megan who promptly fed it into the reader slot on her Pip Boy. "There's tons of data archived on my Dad's terminal," she said. Her voice had a bit of a distracted, droning edge to it, a constant hum, much like the steady tapping noise her fingers made against the keyboard's keys as she worked. "Looks like he lied to us about no one ever leaving. He sent out survey teams several times over the past couple of decades. None recently, but he's still got all the reconnaissance reports logged on his computer. There's maps, photos, transcripts of the team members' debriefings." She shook her head and whistled again, this one softer and more drawn out as her eyes nearly glazed over at the massive influx of data being dumped onto the screen. "You'll want to read all this stuff when you have time."

Megan was busy loading all the data she could into storage on her Pip Boy just in case the hard copies were lost or destroyed. "Gimme some highlights real quick?"

"Uh, ok… there's a settlement nearby that one of the survey teams found. Just a couple of miles away from the Vault, to the southeast, according to the report. The team leader mentions some stuff about the local population. Don't know how much of that data is still accurate after so long…" She frowned and chewed thoughtfully on her lower lip as she skimmed a little more of the text. "She brings up the idea of trading with them… um… huh. That's… ok, that's weird."

"What's weird?" Megan had taken the holodisc Amata had given her, copied its contents to her Pip Boy and tossed the disc itself into one of her jumpsuit's many pockets. She'd worry about her slow metamorphosis into a shuffling heap of sentient, metallic scrap later.

"They use bottlecaps as money on the outside."

"Come again?"

"I'm serious."

"What idiot would use bottlecaps as currency?"

Amata looked up from the terminal, her eyebrows raised considerably, and she shrugged. "Hey, don't look at me, I don't live out there. I'm just reading what's in the report. The same report -you- should be reading," she pointed out, her voice taking on a bit of a chastising edge. "Please tell me you haven't just been sitting there like a lump."

"An extremely good looking and charismatic lump." The redhead flashed her most winning smile.

Unfortunately, all she got in return was a roll of the eyes and a frustrated sigh. "Did you find anything -useful?-"

"Pkkkgggee ffff Fffnnnccy Lllllddssss nnnnn mmmmhhhhh paaahhhkkttt… waaaann wwunn?" Megan held out her hand. In that hand was a small white cardboard box with "Fancy Lads Snack Cakes" stamped boldly on the side. Inside -that-, still wrapped in cellophane, was a tiny chocolate cupcake daintily decorated with vanilla frosting.

Amata looked up once more from her work, her expression one of stunned disbelief. Megan was on the run for her -life,- and yet she'd miraculously found the time to stop and have a snack. The world had most certainly taken a turn for the surreal, and yet, while Amata found herself floundering, Megan looked almost completely composed - the calm center at the middle of a whirling maelstrom of confusion and insanity. She couldn't quite understand how her friend could manage to maintain such poise in the face of all that was happening, but as the brunette looked more closely, she found her answer - the secret as to how Megan was holding on to that oh-so-precious calm.

She wasn't.

It was a brilliant facade, Amata had to admit; it looked genuine enough, the seemingly casual indifference to all the danger, the cavalier attitude, the off-color jibes, the way the girl was offering her a damned cupcake, of all things, at a time like this. Her confidence was supreme; nothing could touch her - at least... that was the image she presented. But underneath it all, there was a crack or two... just a small one here or there, barely noticeable if one didn't know what to look for. But the two of them had grown up together, they knew each other like sisters, and Amata -did- know what to look for. There was an edge to Megan she'd never seen before; the girl was -scared,- and who could blame her - everything was changing, everything familiar disappearing. She wanted... she -needed- _something_ to stay the same.

A lot of things could change in the space of a few short moments. Some things never would.

"Gimme." Amata reached out and took the little snack cake from the redhead's palm. Her fingers fumbled for a few moments with the wrapper before Megan, rolling her eyes and stifling a smirk, snatched it from her hands and peeled the cellophane open in one quick, easy motion. She handed the cupcake back with a flourish, like a magician at the denouement of a particularly crafty illusion.

"Thanks. But I'm not going to applaud," Amata said, dryly.

Megan gave a sad little shrug, resigned to suffer her friend's eternal ingratitude, and watched as the brunette raised the little snack treat in salute before taking a bite. For the next thirty seconds, further communication between the two girls was limited to vague hand gestures and vaguer grunts since they had both been rendered temporarily incapable of speaking.

The silence continued for another minute or so as Amata polished off her cupcake, which gave her time to further comb through her father's files. "You know, I haven't had one of those in a while," she said, once she'd finished eating. "They're good, but I swear they go straight to my hips." She paused, her train of thought catching up with her mouth and both of them coming to a screeching halt. "Meg, stop picturing me naked."

The redhead smiled, but it was a mere shadow of its normal brilliance - missing its customary sparkle. In the past, Megan's smile was, almost without fail, a harbinger of playful mischief... but not this time. Try as she might to keep her spirits up, she'd experienced an entire lifetime's worth of anguish in a single night, with more yet to come. It was becoming very difficult to stay upbeat under those manner of circumstances, but she had to try. It was who she was. "Too late," she said, her smile widening just a touch. She laughed.

A second later, so did Amata.

Not that the joke had been all that particularly funny.

"Listen, I think I got something," Megan said after another moment or two. She slid around to Amata's side of the desk and turned her wrist so that the other girl could read the display. "This looks kinda interesting."

"What's up?"

"Check out when these files were last accessed."

"Huh. Well, there's the record of -our- accessing them, but before that… the last time they were viewed was… earlier today?" Amata's brow furrowed in mild confusion as she processed the implications of that. It didn't take her long to come to the same conclusions that Megan had drawn seconds earlier.

"Exactly. And somehow I doubt your Dad was using these for bedtime reading."

"Which means…"

Megan brightened. "Which means -my- Dad probably went and grabbed himself copies before he left." She chuckled. "Oh, the old man had a streak of larceny in him after all."

Amata snorted and gave Megan a playful backhanded slap on the hip. "Jesus, Meg, you're positively glowing with pride."

"Well, of course I am. It's not every day you find out your father's a vicious rabble rouser just like yourself. I always thought I got that sort of thing from my Mom; it's just nice to know the troublemaking genes are spread across both sides of my family."

"Uh huh."

-----

_Atrium_

_Vault 101_

Yellow warning lights flashed; an alarm sounded, warning everyone to get the hell away from the massive, grinding machinery and its scraping of gears and gnashing of metal teeth as it strained to roll away the colossal steel plug that had long sat between the inhabitants of Vault 101 and the horror-filled wastes that lay outside the vaunted protection of their precious Vault.

If the Overseer's unceasing indoctrination was to be believed, that cog-shaped door hadn't budged a millimeter since the day it had rolled shut, sealing that first generation of settlers inside however many years ago. Their solemn duty as they understood it – to survive, and some day in the distant future, once the earth had become habitable again, to repopulate the surface of the world – had been forgotten… or perhaps, more appropriately, cast aside in favor of the Overseer's own agenda: to keep an entire population in eternal, dismal isolation for the rest of their dreary existences.

Whatever the case, it was remarkable the door's mechanism was in as good shape as it was. The equipment had been well maintained and still functioned as it should, hundreds of years after its initial construction. Amata stood by the control panel, her mouth wide open and her eyes unblinking as the Vault door with its giant, engraved "101" rolled aside and dank, foul-smelling air wafted in through the opening. It was the first breath she'd ever taken of air that had not been cycled through several dozen purifiers, scrubbers, filters, and oxidizers, and laced though it was with the rotten-egg stench of sulfur, it was still air from the -outside,- coming in through the narrow tunnel that led to the cave mouth through which the Vault access door could be reached.

"Wow… you… you did it."

"-We- did it."

The two friends stared into the dim tunnel that stretched out beyond the Vault door and into the unknown. Neither moved, though Amata spoke. "Meg. There's no way all that racket went unheard. Security's gonna be here any second. You… you should go."

The redhead nodded, but she still didn't make any move to head towards the open door. The Vault had always been her home. It hadn't been the ideal existence – she could've done without Susie Mack – the uppity little witch – or those idiotic Tunnel Snakes being such a ridiculous pain in the posterior. She certainly wouldn't have minded fewer run-ins with Amata's pompous blowhard of a father, but even with all its rough spots, the Vault was familiar, and it was home… and even knowing her father was out there, somewhere, in that huge expanse of unexplored, alien wasteland, populated by strange, and likely exceptionally dangerous people… even knowing that she had to find him, it was hard bringing herself to leave. She didn't want to go… at least not alone. "Last chance to come with me." She smiled sadly, like someone about to ask a question they already knew the answer to – and that answer was a disappointing one. "Don't expect you to take it."

Amata turned her head and looked at her, crestfallen, but as sad as she was, she'd chosen her path; she'd set her course. "You know I can't." She didn't need to explain any further.

"I know." A sniffle. "I'm… I'm gonna miss you." But no tears. They wanted to come; she wouldn't let them – not out of any ridiculous sense of machismo, but because too much had happened, and parts of her were still numb. She'd suffered too much in such a short amount of time, and in a way, she was still trying to come to grips with all she'd lost, still trying to sort out -what- she'd lost before she could grieve for it. Though one thing was clear enough: she felt as if she were about to lose Amata – perhaps forever.

The other girl could see the pain in the blue eyes that clung to her face, knew she had to reassure her friend that they'd be reunited someday, maybe even someday soon. "Hey, hey, hey… quite talking like that. I'll see you. You'll be back. You'll go, you'll find your Dad, bring him home. Few weeks, tops." The girl, God bless her, actually seemed to believe what she was saying. "I'll bet you a week's worth of ration coupons on it."

But while Amata seemed certain, Megan wasn't. Still, as difficult as it was, she managed a small smile, trying to put a brave face on the whole business, if only for the sake of those she was leaving behind… and perhaps more than a little for her own sake as well. "Heh. You're on. So… kiss for luck?"

"Sure." The brunette reached out with both hands, placed them on her friend's shoulders and pulled the redhead close. She squeezed her tight, then gave her an affectionate kiss on the cheek, ruffling her hair as she pulled away.

"I was thinking tongue luck."

They'd both known Megan was going to make the joke. There was too much melancholy in the air at that time for her to refrain from breaking the tension any other way. So it was no surprise when Amata chuckled and gave her departing friend a light punch to the arm. "You're disgusting," she said, her voice a gently chastising whisper that, like it always had, and always would, still held a trace of amusement.

"Had to try."


	3. It's a Hole

**Notemeal: (For your daily allotment of Author's Notes and bland, tasteless oatmeal!)**

_1. A couple of people pointed out some issues with a certain section of Chapter 2. You guys know who you are. In light of your comments (which upon review I found I agreed with,) I went back and tweaked that section. The edited chapter's been posted, and I think the revised version does work better. Hope you guys think the same.  
_

_2. This one took a little longer than even I expected, but it's finally done. I'm fairly happy with it, though maybe it doesn't quite sing as well as the other two chapters. Still, here's hoping y'all have fun with it, anyway. Cheers, kids.  
_

-----

Entry C, Subsection D-3: "It's a Hole. No, Literally."

_Corner of Pinecrest and Northcott_

_Springvale_

_0547 Hours_

She must've looked quite the sight: a nineteen year old girl, pale as a sheet, her sweaty, red hair plastered to her face and neck, clad in a bright blue jumpsuit, clinging to the rusted remnants of a fire hydrant and trying very, very hard not to bawl like a toddler who'd just dropped her ice cream cone on the pavement.

_Hey! Hey, I'm talking to you! Yeah, you in the blue pajamas! Get a hold of yourself, you big baby! This is embarrassing! This is… this…_

_I… damn it… I want my Daddy…_

Since she had both of her hands wrapped tightly around the cherry-red metal plug bolted to the ground, she wasn't able to physically pummel herself about the face and neck. That made it really hard to bodily slap some sense into herself. She tried projecting mental images of her well-intentioned friends accosting her with baseball bats, pool cues and rolling pins in an attempt to sober her up, but without the subdural hematomas, it just wasn't the same.

_Awww, little girl want her Daddy? Well, you gotta find him first! That's why you're out here, in case you forgot! So you woman up, Megan Catherine McCulloch! You pull yourself together right now and listen to me, young lady! You are -not- going to fall off the face of the Earth and get launched into the endless void of interstellar space. Gravity doesn't work that way!_

She wasn't stupid, and she wasn't uneducated. The Vault had books, the Vault had films. It wasn't like she didn't know what the damned -sky- was… that it was what passed for a "ceiling" around these parts. Somehow, though, despite being armed with all manner of book-learning, this stupid, primal, instinctive _hindbrain _of hers couldn't help but react… poorly to the fact that _THERE WAS NO GODDAMNED ROOF OVER HER HEAD!_

_Pant. Pant. Pant._

Now, true… she knew that reading about the outside world and watching movies about it couldn't prepare her one hundred percent for what she would encounter once she'd stepped outside that Vault door, but she'd been expecting a far better ratio than "1.5% prepared, 98.5% unprepared." For the love of _God,_ those were some -shitty- numbers.

And yet, here she was. The first few hours immediately after her exit from Vault 101 hadn't been too bad, but it had been dark, then. Pitch black, almost. No moon, and she couldn't -see- anything. She'd just barely been able to navigate using the faint light from her Pip Boy's screen to see by. Guided – and that was a term she used loosely – by the rough map she'd been equipped with, she'd stumbled and tripped – not to mention swore the whole time (being Irish and all, a rather impressive collection of profanity had practically been bred into her brain's language centers) – her way into the ruins of Springvale. The buildings there were falling apart, of course, but she'd managed to find one that was reasonably intact and miraculously not inhabited by something that wanted to eat her, kill her, or… do other unsavory things to her… and not necessarily in that order, either. She'd taken shelter inside to try and get some rest.

She hadn't managed to get much actual -sleep- of course – unless she was willing to count slumping against a wall, nodding off every fifteen seconds only to shake herself awake again after two seconds of unconsciousness, as "sleep." (By the way, she wasn't.) But it had at least given her the chance to get off her feet for a while, to just sit and stop moving. She'd been pretty much on the go constantly since Amata had woken her to tell her… well, to tell her that her little world, the familiar, peaceful (relatively speaking) one she'd always known had come to a rather untimely end. She was still processing that "little detail."

After a few hours of trying to rest and mostly failing miserably, she'd come up with the idea of boring herself into unconsciousness, and so out had come the pile of recon reports that she and Amata had recovered from the Overseer's computer. The material was dry, if informative. But while the reading wasn't conducive to staying awake, the "sitting in an abandoned house while who-knows-what might be lurking outside to kill/eat/something you" wasn't conducive to sleeping. Eventually, she settled on a compromise, deciding to replay some of the audio transcripts of the survey team's debriefing sessions.

"The town of Springvale is in ruins – not like we expected any different. A few of the buildings are still standing, but they're almost all in a poor state of repair, having been abandoned… who knows how long ago. The houses are all falling apart, and the one large building we could find, the elementary school, is more of a crater than an actual building. Half of the structure has collapsed and is open to the elements."

"Not all the news is bad, however. Springvale may be gone, but other settlements do exist. We came across one during our reconnaissance probe. While the majority of our group was engaged in searching the remains of Springvale, we sent Quintain and Sinclair off to the east to see what they could see. They came back a short time later with news: a short distance southeast of Springvale was a small community called Megaton."

"The town's inhabitants are few, at present – a couple of dozen at most, and the settlement itself is… well, it's a hole. No, literally. It's built around a bomb crater. Despite the odd choice of build site, however, and the ramshackle construction of the homes themselves, the people of Megaton had apparently been eking out a living in the area for some time even before our survey team encountered them. From what we've seen out here so far, life in the wasteland is quite difficult, but they've managed fairly well for themselves, which speaks volumes for their tenacity and skill. They're open to further contact with us, too, which I think would certainly benefit both us and them."

It hadn't been all that much to go on, but Megan concluded that if the survey teams had located a settlement near to the Vault, and if that settlement were still around, it would've been the likely first place her father would have stopped after his hasty exit – if only to get some traveling supplies for wherever he was headed next. Looking there for some information about him was a thin, tenuous lead, but with her new refugee status, thin leads were pretty much all that she had to keep her going. She'd been exiled from her home, she had no friends, and the only family she had left, indeed the only family she'd really had… ever, was somewhere a few steps ahead of her. She had some serious catching up to do.

Which is how she'd found herself in this particular predicament. Having read some of the reports on Megaton, listened to a few others, and determined that the small community built around a giant hole in the ground was her best and only hope for finding her father at this point, she'd promptly hoisted herself up and boldly strode out the door of her commandeered shelter, filled with every confidence in the world that she would complete the task she'd set for herself.

Three and a half minutes later, as the arid, howling winds of the Capital Wasteland began to sting eyeballs that had gone dry from lack of blinking, she realized that she'd been staring straight upwards at… emptiness. Lots and lots of emptiness.

_It… it's a very nice shade of orange, though._

Unfortunately, while she found the hue that her impending doom took to be quite relaxing, the fact that it was… her -impending doom- that was approaching threw her into something resembling a full-blown panic. Emitting a very undignified "Eeeeeeek!" sound, (Not that she would ever admit to having done so except under extraordinary duress, of course,) she flung herself at the nearest solid (and heavy) object, which, in this case, turned out to be the rusted fire hydrant, wrapped all four limbs about it, and adhered herself to it as if the entire surface of her skin and Vault suit had been replaced with flypaper.

Nearly ten minutes later, as dizziness caused by hyperventilation began to overcome her, and a tremor – not to mention the early hints of muscle cramps – began to creep into her arms and legs, she made another concerted effort to haul the tattered remnants of her courage together just long enough to pry herself loose from the big chunk of red-painted steel she was using as an anchor.

_You can't stay here forever, you know, _she told herself. The "hard sell" hadn't gone quite the way she'd hoped it would, so she was trying a softer touch, praying that perhaps honey would work where a ball-peen hammer had not. _You're going to starve to death. And… and God, just think of what people are gonna say when they find your body. Can you imagine the scandal when someone wanders upon your desiccated corpse and puts all the pieces together? You left the Vault on this grand quest to find your father, freaked out when you saw the sky, and died dry humping a fire hydrant. That's your legacy, Megan, the chronicle of your life._

"My apologies, young lady, I don't mean to intrude, but might I ask what exactly you're doing?"

Megan's head whirled around so quickly, she was afraid she'd twisted her neck off at the shoulders. Her eyes had opened wide at the sound of that voice, and as she expected, that… damnable sky was still right where she'd left it – mocking her, flooding her mind with terrifying images of its eternal embrace of mind-numbing emptiness and void. The only good news was that there was something else in her field of vision to occupy her attention… at least for the moment.

Off a short distance away stood some kind of animal – she wasn't quite sure what to make of it, other than it was large, sand-brown, and looked more than a little on the sickly side – then again, out here, with constant exposure to all this radiation, what didn't? It also had two heads – that came as a bit of a shock. But the surprises didn't stop there. The creature, whatever it was, stood on a set of four wobbly-looking legs, and had a tiny stump of a tail that flicked idly back and forth. Two stubby looking horns were set into one of its heads, but what really drew her attention were the massive, disgustingly swollen udders – covered in warts and sores – that dangled from the animal's hindquarters. She shuddered and quickly focused her attention somewhere else.

Atop the creature's back was a mottled collection of assorted items: what looked to be bits of random garbage and detritus scavenged from all across the wasteland. Broken machine parts had been strapped down to a makeshift saddle that had been slung across the animal's back alongside a few rusted out blades, a handful of old toys, some strips of worn rubber and chunks of scrap metal. Megan wasn't sure what good any of that old junk would do anybody, but she had to admit to a certain bias. Back in the Vault, "repair" meant "replace." Whenever she'd been called upon to service some piece of malfunctioning reactor equipment, she'd simply swapped the broken parts for fresh ones from the seemingly infinite bounty of the Vault storage lockers. There'd never been any need to jury-rig solutions – it was a luxury she was sure the people out here in the Wastes didn't have. More than that, she realized it was a skill she was lacking and would likely have to learn.

But that was starting to drift away from more immediate concerns, like the man standing right next to her, his weather-beaten and heavily lined face hovering low and only a few inches above her own. He was clean-shaven, but the dark brown hair atop his head was tousled from strong wind and dusty from miles upon miles of travel. His clothes were well worn, constantly patched and re-patched in a never-ending attempt to keep them functional. While he didn't seem to be carrying much in terms of overt weaponry, just a small sidearm at his hip, appearances could be quite deceiving; Megan knew that much. Despite his polite demeanor so far, she wasn't willing to trust him any farther than she could throw him – which wasn't very far given her arms were still quite full of fire hydrant.

That being said, she still owed him a response to his initial question. "I… um… nothing," she said, lamely. For perhaps the very first time in her entire life – aside from that one instance when Butch had called her a stupidhead while she'd been eating a peanut butter sandwich – Megan was unable to come up with a witty rejoinder on the spot.

He smiled and nodded graciously at her. "I see. Because it appears to my, admittedly untrained, eye that you are clutching a fire hydrant. For what reason, I have not yet been able to discern."

Though his pose wasn't all that threatening – he was bent down to talk to her with his hands resting on his knees – her instincts were still telling her that she needed to do something. Immediately. This man could be dangerous. Stories had circulated around the Vault of people driven mad out in the Wastes, men who had turned to cannibalism in order to survive the harsh, unforgiving conditions of the Capital Wasteland. For all she knew, this man was sizing her up for stew, and it was deathly foolish to be clutching at a damned fire hydrant instead of jumping away from him, drawing her weapon, and insisting he keep his distance.

She opened her mouth to speak, intending to order him to back off. However, all that came out of her mouth was "Oh, God… are… are you going to eat me?"

"That all depends. Are you, perchance, made out of meat?"

She blinked at the question. "Um… yes?"

_JESUS, MARY AND JOSEPH, WHY DID I ADMIT THAT?!_

The man stroked his chin and the barest hint of a frown crossed his face. "Oh… well, that -is- unfortunate. For you, of course."

_You… you don't want to do this… I won't make a good meal for you… I mean, I'm a little on the scrawny side, you know? Kinda thin… and… and I mean, my breasts aren't all that bad, but they're not all that -terribly- succulent, you know… you could do better. Plus… plus I never did get enough exercise sitting around all the time in that Vault, so my legs aren't as in good shape as they could be…_

_Oh. Oh, wait… no… no, you… you kinda -want- a little baby fat on there, don't you? Adds to the flavor of the meat, no, I get that… oh, God, why am I even thinking about this?!_

_Well, um… um… I… uh, I know! I… I have a… a flabby backside! That's a dealbreaker, right? Can't eat me now!_

_No… no, c'mon, admit it, Meg, you've got a positively luscious ass. LUSH. OUS. It's incredible. No buts about it. Heh. Pun intended._

…

_Oh, fucking hell, you are SCREWED._

For the space of a few, heartstopping moments, she continued to huddle there, waiting for the coup de grace that would end her search to find her father before it had even really begun, but that killing blow never came. When she finally opened her eyes (one at a time,) the "bloodthirsty cannibal" was still standing there, smiling at her, an amused twinkle in his eyes. "I realize you're fresh out of the Vault," he said, "but I'm fairly certain they still taught you what the sky was inside those things."

She didn't reply at first – the fact that she wasn't dead or hacked up into bouillon cubes was still sinking in. But once her brain had had a moment or two to catch up, she blinked. The accusation that she'd been improperly educated had suddenly gotten her gumption up. She'd always considered herself one of Vault 101's smarter kids, (she had the test scores to prove it, goshdarnit,) and implying otherwise was a good way to get a rise out of her. "Of course they did," she sniffed haughtily. "And… how did you know I'm from a Vault?"

"You have a giant, yellow '101' on your back."

Her cheeks flushed crimson. "Oh. Right." She took a breath. "So, you're not going to eat me?"

"You look to be high in sodium, and I'm trying to reduce my salt intake."

She couldn't let a comment like that slide without some manner of pithy response, and though the redhead was still shaken by all that had occurred over the past few minutes, she was slowly recovering her equilibrium. She wasn't quite up to speaking without a small tremor slipping into her voice, but she at least managed to get the words out. "S-sounds like a good idea. You, uh… you don't want to develop hypertension. Blood pressure meds are probably… probably really hard to find out here."

"This is true. I doubt even the fabled Doc Hoff would carry those," the man said with a nod. "So… would it be safe to assume that the reason you've anchored yourself to this finely crafted contraption of red-painted steel is that you're deathly frightened of floating off the face of the Earth if you let go?"

She cleared her throat and the blush that had erupted across her cheeks earlier spread a little further, creeping down the back of her neck and even up to her ears, lending her normally pale skin a little bit of extra color. "Well, now that you've gone and put it that way, sir, it sounds downright silly." She made an awkward sounding noise as she cleared her throat.

"Not at all," the man hastened to reassure her, his tone of voice soothing. "There's a whole lot of… well, nothing up there. It's rather intimidating if you think about it too much. Thankfully, most of us don't. But most of us didn't live in a giant metal box underground, either. Almost, most of us have gravity bracelets." He flashed her a bright and easy smile and extended his wrist towards her. Looped around it was a simple piece of string – no beads, no ornamentation of any kind, in fact – just simple string.

She chuckled. "Gravity bracelets." It wasn't a question.

He flashed her a surreptitious wink. At least that's what it looked like from where she was huddled. Then again, it could have just been the glare of the rising sun – which, by the way, was starting to hurt her eyes. She was pretty sure it was a wink, though. "Oh, yes," he said. "Just like this one. Keep you from floating right off the face of the world. Incredible technology, but not all that new, actually. I'm surprised you haven't heard of it. I was always told the records in those Vaults were extremely comprehensive."

"Guess that little bit of data must've slipped someone's mind," she said, managing not to smile and keep her voice noncommittal. "No offense, but that still just looks like a piece of string tied around your wrist."

"No offense taken, Young Miss," he said, with the practiced ease of someone used to defusing touchy situations with diplomacy. "I hope my own words don't cause you any affront, either, but of course you wouldn't recognize what you're seeing here, given your rather limited experience with the world above-ground. If I may so humbly suggest that you just trust me on this? After all, I'm not floating away, am I?" He held his arms away from his sides and did a quick little twirl, showing that he was, indeed, still quite solidly anchored to the ground underneath his feet.

"No. No, I suppose you aren't." This time she couldn't hold back the chuckle. He was quite clearly BSing her. She knew it, and more than that, he knew that she knew. But they were both having fun playing this silly, twisted little game, and more than that, she suspected she understood his true motive. This little bit of sport they were engaged in was proving to be quite the distraction after all, helping her keep her mind off… well… that sky thing.

"Exactly." He grinned. "Listen, I'll tell you what. I keep a few of these in storage on my pack Brahmin here, just in case the one I'm using breaks down and I start to drift away. It's good to be prepared in case of emergencies, you understand. But I've never been able to turn away someone in dire need, so I'd be more than happy to sell you one of my spares."

"That'd be great, but I don't have any caps. And I heard you folks up here won't take these green pieces of paper with pictures of Ulysses S. Grant on them."

He gave a smooth shrug and ran a hand through his lightly tangled but very dusty hair. "That's quite all right, I'm willing to work out an arrangement."

And suddenly a whole host of alarm bells went off in her head. There was always a catch, and he'd just sprung it on her. When she spoke, her voice had dropped an octave. "Oh, really?"

He winced, suddenly realizing he'd given her the wrong idea. "Ah. My apologies. It truly is a shame that a man can't have a conversation of this sort with a girl your age without someone ultimately assuming… well… -that,- but I was suggesting something quite innocent, I promise you." He held his hands out, palms forward, and even took a step or two back to try and convince her of his sincerity. "You see, I'm on my way to the nearby settlement of Megaton, and I find myself with a distinct lack of someone to talk to. Old Bessie here has been a faithful companion for many a year, but unfortunately her conversational skills are limited to 'Mooooooooo…' and 'Nnnnnnngggggghhh…' Our talks tend to be distinctly one-sided as a result. And the mercenary guard I've hired to protect my merchant caravan – he's off searching for raiders along our route I believe, and should return shortly – well, he's little better. The man's little more than a gun turret on legs. That being said, if you'd care to travel with us, I'd welcome the company, and the conversation."

"And in return, you're just going to -give- me this piece of -extremely- useful technology?" she asked. A note of incredulity had crept into her voice. For one, despite his reassurances that everything he intended was on the level, a few kind words and a smile or two were certainly no guarantee of that. Sure, the man seemed harmless enough, but that was no guarantee, either.

Aside from that, even if the offer were one hundred percent legitimate, what it really boiled down to was this: a complete stranger who had no reason whatsoever to help her was doing some idiot girl fresh out of the Vault, someone he'd just met, a pretty big favor completely out of the goodness of his heart. She wanted to believe that people who lived on the surface were still capable of those kinds of acts of random kindness, that even as harsh as life was, they hadn't become so jaded that such notions were beyond them… but all the stories she'd heard, all the things people had told her had led her to believe that, at least as far as "surface-dwellers" were concerned, the milk of human kindness had curdled long ago. Maybe it was all Vault propaganda – it wouldn't be surprising given so much of the other Brahmin shit that they'd been fed all their lives, but what if it wasn't?

Going off with this individual was a risky proposition, but he -had- managed to calm her down, keep her mind off that whole "falling off into the sky" problem, and he -did- know the way to Megaton. She'd likely be safer traveling with someone than trying to make it on her own. And the odds of him having something… nefarious planned – while she couldn't discount the possibility entirely, her gut was telling her whoever this man was, he wasn't a threat.

Traveling with him was a risk, yes, but just about everything out on the surface was. Besides, leaving the Vault had been a risk. Hell, staying in the Vault had been a risk. _Life_ was a risk. "So, you're really going to 'pay' me just so you'll have someone to talk to while we walk? That's one crazy idea of a bargain," she said, slowly getting to her feet and dusting herself off.

"Well, 'Crazy' is my name."

"I'm sorry?"

"My family name is Wolfgang. 'Crazy' is my given name." He gave her another quick wink before launching into a deep and rather impressive looking bow. It was a little awkward – there wasn't much call for bowing out in the Wastes, but he managed.

Megan laughed at his antics. "So your parents wanted a girl," she commented, dryly.

He snapped his fingers and flashed her a bright smile. "That's it, exactly."

-----

_Main Gate_

_Megaton_

The sun was just starting to get high in the sky by the time she parted ways with Crazy Wolfgang just outside the main gate of the town of Megaton. As a handful of prospective customers approached his caravan and he began to set up shop, she thanked him for his help and promised to keep an eye out for any promising bits of "junk" she came across in her travels.

"Great. Sainted. Jumping. Monkeys," she swore under her breath, as she hiked up the small hill separating the road and the entrance to the town proper. The sunlight beating down on her was brighter than any light she'd ever had to deal with before, her eyes having been accustomed to nothing stronger than fluorescent light bulbs. The way the sun reflected off the sand was murder on her, and even with the old baseball cap Stanley had given her all those years ago, and even with her arm up to try and shade her eyes with her sleeve, she couldn't quite keep her eyes from watering. She knew it was only a matter of time before she would get used to the conditions out here in the Wastes, she just hoped she'd survive long enough to make the adjustment, and that maybe she could find something that could help her in this ramshackle town.

_Ramshackle._

The leader of the survey team hadn't been kidding when she'd used that term to refer to Megaton's buildings, Megan thought to herself as she made her way past the ancient Protectron unit standing sentry at the gate that barred entry into the town itself. She took a quick look around at her surroundings. The locals had crafted their dwellings from whatever materials they could scavenge. Most of the walls looked to be cobbled together from scrap metal stolen from some large… something or other, and the pieces were held together with rusted bolts on the verge of failure. Just about each one of those walls looked to have taken some sort of damage at some point or another over the years, necessitating hasty patches be spot welded over the cracks and gouges.

Jagged corners of more rusted metal protruded from the seams of walls or hung where a roof joined the rest of the building proper. The inhabitants had tried to fold those corners in or round them off as best they could, but the work was slip-shod in places, and a haven for Tetanus in others.

Of course, the real attraction was the fixture right in the center of town that almost certainly had given the town of Megaton its name: Megan had seen pictures in the historical archives while doing reports for school on pre-War Chinese technology. Back then, she'd wondered when she'd ever need to -use- any of that knowledge. Life, of course, seemed to have a very deliberate sense of irony.

Sitting in the middle of a crater about twenty to twenty five feet in diameter and maybe about ten feet deep, filled with brackish water, was an old Chinese nuclear warhead, probably deployed as one of eight from a MIRV-equipped missile. One rocket engine, eight bombs. For some reason, this one hadn't airburst or detonated on impact. Yet.

And these people had built their entire town around it. That was one thing they'd "conveniently" forgotten to mention in the recon report. They'd mentioned the town was built around a bomb crater. They'd just forgotten to mention the goddamn bomb was still -in- it.

_Nobody ever tells me -anything.-_

As she stepped through the gate, the path slanted sharply downwards, heading straight for the crater at the center of the settlement. People milled around in all directions, going about their business, completely ignoring the arrival of someone new to their town. Not that she was all that surprised. It wasn't like the Vault – up here, people came and went as they pleased. Still, she'd been hoping for some manner of welcome, someone she could talk to, someone who could help her get her bearings-

"Howdy. Can I help you with something?"

As if in answer to her unvoiced prayers, exiting one of the buildings off to her right was a dark-skinned man, probably in his late thirties to early forties. He was dressed in a leather longcoat that, like most everyone's clothing here above-ground, was covered in a thin layer of dust. He had a neatly trimmed beard and fairly close-cropped hair tucked underneath a light brown Stetson hat.

_I like that hat. It's… jaunty._

What struck her the most about him, however, was the Chinese Type-56 assault rifle strapped to his back. It was easily the deadliest weapon she'd ever seen in her life… aside from Dad's Baked Bean Surprise. (She still hadn't managed to figure out what the "Surprise" was. Her current prevailing theory was 'If you consume it and don't succumb to massive gastrointestinal trauma, that's the surprise.') But it wasn't so much the weapon as it was the individual who carried it. Whoever he was, he seemed to be a man of contrasts. While he was clearly well armed and had a hard, almost flinty look about his eyes that suggested he'd been forced to kill on more than one occasion, the smile he was currently wearing was warm and friendly. Inviting, even. As was the wave he gave her as he approached.

She tried to return the grin, but she was so busy trying to figure the man out… not to mention the fact that she was still a bit put out by someone brandishing that much hardware in her immediate vicinity. Still, the corners of her mouth managed to curl themselves up into something at least vaguely resembling a smile. "That… that depends," she said in response to the man's question. "Um… who are you?"

He chuckled softly and ducked his head, even doffing his hat a little bit by way of apology. "Well, if I haven't gone and forgotten my manners. Name's Simms. Lucas Simms. I'm the sheriff in this town. Part-time mayor, too. Well, when we need a mayor, that is." He held out his hand.

Megan took it. Simms' grip was firm, like she expected – almost a little too firm as a matter of fact, and she almost winced as he squeezed her fingers tightly. "Nice to meet you, Sheriff. My name's Megan. Sorry if I seem a little jumpy, it's just that I-"

"You're fresh out of the Vault and things out here aren't what you're quite used to?"

She frowned, her brow furrowing in mild confusion as she struggled to discern just how he'd managed to figure -that- one out.

The solution hit her about a half second later. "How did you know- oh… yeah, I keep forgetting. The giant, yellow 101 on my back."

He laughed lightly and gave her a brief nod. "Heh. It's been years since I've seen one of those Vault suits."

She smiled a little sheepishly and shrugged. "Yeah, Crazy Wolfgang said something similar. I walked here from Springvale with him. He told me that a few years back, people from my Vault were out here exploring… that a few even came as far as Megaton. 'course word -inside- the Vault is that the door's never opened even once since they first locked everyone in back when the bombs dropped. Makes you wonder what else ain't true, doesn't it? But that's neither here nor there." She frowned again and shrugged apologetically. "Sorry. Rambling. I, uh… I tend to do that when I'm nervous. You, um… you said you're the Sheriff around here?"

"That's right. Law's a pretty… nebulous concept around these parts, but we do what we can."

"Gotcha. Maybe you might be able to help me, then? I'm looking for my father. He probably passed through here…" She did a little mental math trying to hash out how long it might have taken her father to escape the Vault and get to Megaton. "… mmmm… maybe some time yesterday? He's about your height, I guess, maybe a couple of inches shorter, little older. About the same complexion as me. Brown hair and beard… I figure he would've stood out if he was wearing a Vault suit, too, but he might've changed clothes, so…" She shrugged.

Simms shook his head. "Sorry, I don't think anyone new came through recently, but to be honest, I've had my hands kinda full. Haven't really been able to spend all that much time checking out any new arrivals. You're the first new face I've greeted personally in a while."

Megan stifled a sigh. She'd been hoping for some good news, but if she wanted to be honest with herself, she knew she couldn't expect to make good on her lead on the very first try. Finding her father wasn't going to be an easy job… not by any stretch of the imagination. Still, she couldn't help feeling just a touch disappointed that the Sheriff didn't have any solid information for her. But just because -he- hadn't seen James didn't mean the whole conversation was a bust…

"Would you have any idea where I could ask around, then? Maybe someone else in town might have seen him?"

The Sheriff thought the question over for a moment or two, but he looked hesitant to give her an answer. She wasn't sure why, and was just about to prod him a little further when he frowned and let out a quick sigh. "I do…" He paused for a moment, clearly still hesitating on whether to tell Megan what he was thinking or not. "But to be honest with you… kid your age, living under a rock all your life? I'm not sure I want to send you over there."

She almost smiled at that. Part of her rebelled at the idea of being treated like a child… wanted to tell him that she didn't need protecting. But her experiences in Springvale had made it fairly clear that a little protecting was probably a good thing.

Still, she couldn't back away from anything resembling a lead, no matter how tenuous, no matter how potentially dangerous… not when the stakes where what they were, and not when she currently had so little to go on. "I appreciate the sentiment, Sheriff," she said, trying to keep her voice as steady as possible. "But it's really important I find him. He… he kinda left the Vault without telling me why, and… and I just… I need to find him."

Simms looked her in the eyes for a few moments, and his gaze softened, as if suddenly finding something in her story that resonated with him. He nodded, understanding her need if not necessarily feeling comfortable with helping her get into trouble. "I… I guess I can understand that. But you be careful, y'hear? And if anything happens, you holler, get me?"

_Call for the lawman if I get into more trouble than I can handle? Which is probably any trouble at all? Yeah, better believe it._

She nodded solemnly. "You bet."

"All right. There's only one saloon here in Megaton. Run by a man named Moriarty. If you look just over there, you can see the place. Moriarty likes to keep his hands in everything around here, and even if he personally doesn't know anything about your Dad, there's always bound to be some gossip floating around." Simms scratched his beard. "Sounds like a good place to start."

"Thanks, Sheriff. I appreciate the help."

"You're welcome, little lady. You take care, now."

"I will. Oh, wait… one last thing before I go… um… I have to ask…"

"Heh heh. Everyone does."

"It's not still live, is it?" The two of them turned towards the bomb in the center of town.

"Honestly, we don't know. It hasn't gone off yet, obviously. But could it?" He shrugged. "Hell if anyone knows for sure."

Megan let out a low whistle and scratched the back of her neck. "Jesus. How do you folks sleep at night knowing… well, knowing there's possibly live nuclear ordnance just thirty feet away? I mean… I swiped a handful of cherry bombs once and hid them under my bunk, and I couldn't sleep the entire night thinking they were going to blow me up and I was going to spend the rest of my very short life running through the halls of the Vault with my hair on fire and my skin melting off."

"Just one of those things you get used to, I guess. The town's been here for a whole lotta years, and the bomb's been here for longer. The way folk see it, if it ain't gone off yet, it probably ain't gonna."

Megan let that explanation roll around in her head a little bit. Maybe that was how things were done on the surface… it made sense in a way. Life above ground was filled with a lot more uncertainty than life in a Vault. For all its flaws, Vault life tended to be more… stable, at the very least. "No offense, but… I'm not sure I could live with 'probably.' The idea of suddenly waking up one morning and finding myself atomized would make it real hard to get to bed the night before."

Simms nodded and offered up a little shrug that suggested he wasn't much happier with the situation, just more resigned to it. His words reflected a similar sentiment. "Well, just 'tween you and me, kid, not sure I'm a hundred percent comfortable with it, neither, but since nobody around here has the expertise to do anything about that bomb, we're all just trying to get by as best we can."

"Hmm."

He threw a questioning glance in her direction, and his head took on a curious little tilt. He certainly had the gaze of an experienced lawman, always appraising things, always searching for answers in people's faces, and in their body language. "Hmm?"

"Sorry, I was just thinking for a second, there. It's just… really, the safest thing to do would be to try and remove the payload of fissionable materials, since without those the bomb doesn't have any fuel to go boom with. Plus, it looks like you're getting some leakage into the local ground water, too. So get rid of the fission pile, and no more boom, no more radiation contamination. Only problem is, that'd take a lot of heavy lifting capacity you just don't have, so…" She tapped her chin with a fingertip as her mind worked the problem over from several different angles. "It seems the best bet would probably be to try and just disable the firing mechanisms in the guidance section of the warhead, then seal up all the cracks in the casing as best you can to limit the radiation spread."

When she stopped talking, she found him staring at her as if she'd grown a second head and that second head had started singing loudly, off-key and in a foreign language. "You… actually knowing something about this?"

"Uh… well, I… I mean… not really bombs, per se. The biggest explosives I ever messed with were homemade firecrackers. But I was a reactor tech in the Vault, so I've got some experience with… well, the ins and outs of some of this kind of machinery, I guess." She blinked and shot him a slightly panicked look. "You're not suggesting what I think you're suggesting, are you?"

"If you think I'm suggesting that you go take a look at that bomb, then I'm afraid I'm suggesting it." The corners of his mouth had tugged upwards into the barest hint of a smile, like a card sharp who'd just found someone new to hustle… though perhaps without so much of the sinister overtones.

She blinked again, and an even greater edge of panic had crept into her eyes and her voice. "Sheriff, I'm… honestly kinda flattered you think I'm up for that, but one, you don't even know me, and two, this thing has enough firepower to blink away your town and like everything within, oh, say, the immediate eight square miles?"

"I didn't say you should go poking around in its innards," he said reasonably, "I just said you should take a look at it. Just have a look. And if, maybe, you think you can do something to decommission that bomb permanently, well… the people of this town would be mighty grateful. There'd be quite the reward in it for you."

Megan shook her head emphatically. "Money's not the issue, Mr. Simms, I'd just feel really awful if I killed us all in one big blast of cleansing fire. It'd kinda wreck my whole morning…" She looked at him, as if imploring him to change his mind, but since he didn't seem inclined to do so, she sighed and relented. "But ok, I'll go take a peek."

-----

"Well?"

Megan stood up and dusted off her hands, trying to ignore the curious glances she got from passers-by and the slightly more pointed looks she was getting from the Children of the Atom – fanatics who worshipped the weapon as some kind of holy relic that was central to their destiny. She could imagine they weren't too happy with her poking around with the sacred heirloom that was most critical to their transcending to a higher plane of existence, but they weren't about to give her a hard time – not with Simms standing sentry just behind her. She was grateful for that. "Honestly? It's not -quite- as scary as I expected it to be. Still scary, but… maybe not -as- scary. I'm still not sure I'm up to tackling a job like this on my own, though. You've got to have someone around who's good with tools, someone you trust to fix up anything that gets broken around town?"

The Sheriff frowned darkly, his brow furrowing. "There's Moira over at Craterside Supply. She's quite the hot hand with a socket wrench…"

"My powers of clairvoyance tell me there is a 'but' in the near future."

His smile was wan, like someone who'd bitten into a rotting bit of mutfruit. "Yep. That you do. She's a whiz with that kind of stuff, but the woman's a little… eccentric. To put it mildly." The tone of his voice suggested there was far more to the story than he was letting on. Though she'd been out of the Vault for less than a day, it was clear to Megan that lying by omission was a fairly common occurrence.

"Oh."

"She means well, but she can be a little scatterbrained at times, and it's hard to keep her focused."

Megan knew the type. Megan -was- the type, in a lot of ways. She'd always enjoyed tinkering with bits of broken-down machinery back in the Vault. She'd had a habit of taking things apart to see how they worked. She'd just rarely seemed to get around to putting them back together. There was a workbench in one of the maintenance workshops that she'd commandeered for her own use that was constantly covered in parts from various bits of disassembled gadgets and doodads that she'd always intended to reassemble but never seemed to find the time for. The one difference was, she'd never thought to stick her screwdriver into anything all that much more dangerous than an old alarm clock. "I think I understand. I still might need her help with this, though… I'll need a little while to think about it. If it's ok with you, I'm going to head on over to that bar you mentioned, see if I can scrounge up some information about my Dad."

The Sheriff nodded. "All right. Good luck."

"Thanks."

-----

_Moriarty's Saloon_

_Megaton_

The place was hot, it was filthy, it reeked of sweat and stale beer. The furniture was in horrible condition; all the chairs were rusted, and those lucky enough to still have some kind of upholstery were leaking their stuffing out of dozens of tiny cracks and tears. The clientele wasn't much better. They, too, looked… worn, at best, all of them wearing weathered, beaten clothing. Then there was the… bartender.

She tried not to stare. It wasn't polite. It was also, however… really hard not to stare.

The reconnaissance reports had made mention of massively irradiated humans known collectively as ghouls, who, instead of succumbing to radiation poisoning had actually survived. But the mutations had been extensive, and were often more than just physical in nature. The marring of their physical appearance had been excessive, however, and more often than not, that was what people tended to focus on more than anything else. It wasn't fair, she knew that, but she found herself doing the same even as she took a seat at the counter, and when she noticed that eerie, bloodshot gaze turning to fall upon her, she grimaced visibly and looked away.

"Help you?"

The voice was raspy and harsh – not surprising given that much of the man's vocal cords had probably disintegrated along with a good bit of the rest of his flesh. He'd probably also noticed her staring – she'd done an exceptionally poor job of hiding it, after all. She made to apologize. "I'm sorry… I… I was staring… I, uh… I've never seen anyone in your… um… condition before." She swallowed to try and relieve a mouth that'd suddenly gone dry. "Well, other than in pictures, and uh… geez, that's... that's real tactful, Megan, yeah, brilliant opening statement right there…" Her voice dropped to an annoyed mutter as she berated herself. "Why don't you just chop your tongue off and use it to paint the walls of this place? They could probably use a fresh coat…" She sighed. "Listen, I'm real sorry if I offended you. I suppose now you'll want me to just be shuffling on out of your bar here…"

The ghoul blinked – he still had eyelids with which to blink. Thankfully. It would have been exceptionally unnerving if he'd had no eyelids and still had a blink reflex. "-My- bar?" He laughed… or at least, that was what she assumed that hacking, smoky sound issuing from somewhere deep in his chest was.

She wasn't sure what he found so funny, but before she could ask, a figure emerged from the back room. He was of above average height with a build that might have been considered 'rangy' in his younger days, but as he'd aged, he'd started to put on a little weight, most of it centered around the gut. He still looked to be a fairly capable brawler, but the silver hair and beard showed that most of his best days were behind him. Still, the perpetual scowl he wore on his face, and the way he stood tall and held his head high as he walked, made it abundantly clear that he at least considered himself as dangerous as ever. "What's all the racket out here?" His words were slightly slurred, taking an already tough to decipher brogue and making it even harder to understand. Clearly, whoever the man was, he'd concluded long ago that it was never too early in the day to start drinking. Or perhaps it was never too late in the evening to stop. Whichever.

"Can't a man get any peace and quiet in his own goddamned place?!"

Simms had referred to the place as "Moriarty's Saloon," but she'd seen plenty of bars in stories and movies that had strange names that didn't fit.

_Moe's Tavern wasn't owned by a guy named Moe, right? Oh… wait, yeah, it was. Well, what about that Korova Milkbar place in that one book you read? I mean… well, no, they served milk there… I mean, it had drugs and stuff in it, but it was still milk… and 'korova' meant cow, which made sense, I guess. So… um… well… uh… damn. Ok, well… fine… maybe sometimes bar names make sense._

Whatever the case, she'd assumed there wouldn't actually -be- a Moriarty at Moriarty's Saloon, but it seemed she was quite wrong about that, as this drunken bum exiting from the back rooms of the tavern seemed to be the owner/operator of the establishment and the man for whom it'd been named.

She already didn't like him.

Though his speech was slightly slurred – honestly, though, she was having a hard time telling how much was the booze and how much was just his awful accent – that seemed to be the only outward sign of intoxication. He walked straight enough as he crossed the room over to where the ghoul bartender had quickly shut his mouth and pretended to look very busy polishing glasses. "It was you, wasn't it? Making all the noise? How many times I hafta tell you to keep yer damn mouth shut! Yer here ta pour drinks, and that's it!" He raised his arm and struck the ghoul across the face with a vicious backhand that sent him stumbling backwards a step or two.

"I… I'm sorry, Mr. Moriarty. It won't happen again. I promise."

Megan watched the ghoul reel back from the punch to the face, watched him practically cower in fear of a second strike, and all because he'd made the "mistake" of laughing at a simple misunderstanding she'd initiated. She had absolutely no idea what she was getting into, but if there was one thing she couldn't stand, it was a bully. And if there was one thing she always did whenever she found a bully, it was pick a fight with them.

She leaned forward on her stool and put her elbows on the bar-top, raising her voice so she could be heard over Moriarty's drunken ranting. "I'm sorry… I know they do things a lot differently here than where I'm from, but I'm pretty sure that no matter where you are, going around smacking people just for laughing still makes you an asshole."

Heads turned. Even this early in the day, the saloon had a fair number of patrons. Most were Megaton locals, folks who had nothing better to do but waste their time and their caps getting drunk off the watered-down swill Moriarty's passed off as liquor. A few others were travelers passing through the area to points unknown. Regardless of who they were or why they were there, however, all of them were suddenly caught up in watching the free show. Some grinned savagely, expecting a bloodbath, others were merely stunned that some complete stranger in bright blue PJs had had either the guts (or more likely the sheer stupidity) to challenge Moriarty in his own bar.

The saloon's proprietor had just begun to wipe his hands on a filthy towel when Megan spoke up. Suddenly his bloodshot and bleary eyes were right on her, his lips curled into an almost-snarl. "And where I'm from, little girls know to keep their stupid mouths shut before something bad happens to them." He flicked the towel carelessly onto the bar and leaned forward to tower over her.

_Well, congratulations, Megan. He's pissed. And you've pissed. Yourself. Now what?_

She hadn't. Pissed herself. Not literally, at any rate, but her heart -was- doing its best impression of a sprint runner on Buffout, and that was making her feel distinctly unwell. She stood up from her bar stool and planted both hands on the counter-top, leaned forward herself and did her best to stare Moriarty right in the eye. It didn't help that even at her full height the top of her head barely reached his chin. "Is that so?"

"Aye, 'tis." His expression made it abundantly clear that he would take an extreme amount of pleasure in gutting her, but just before he was about to reach across the bar, grab her by the shoulders and possibly fling her through the door, he stopped and squinted as if trying extra hard to focus his eyes on something – specifically, her face. "Wait just one damned minute… no… you can't… you can't be her…"

_He's not killing you. This is good. This is very good. This is your chance. Maybe your only chance, so don't blow it, ok?_

"Oh, now you recognize me, huh? Like I'm going to believe -that.- A drunk like you couldn't find your own ass with both hands and a locator beacon."

_You have a latent death wish, don't you?_

Luckily for her, now that he'd apparently recognized her, he didn't seem as much inclined to put his first through her face, though she was sure his reasons for granting such a reprieve weren't altruistic in the least. Almost certainly he felt he could profit more from 'helping' her than he could from simply getting her blood all over his floor. Still, it wouldn't be wise to continue baiting him any further.

Which is why that was exactly what she did.

There was a fine line between "intelligence" and "wisdom." She'd often been told she had the former but lacked the latter.

"I think you and I need to have a little talk."

" 'A talk,' huh? That a euphemism for me extracting your molars with my fist?"

He snorted, his patience once again starting to wear thin. He grit his teeth and stared her down. "No. That's a euphemism for you shutting the hell up and me telling you something I get the feeling you want to know. But not where everyone can hear us. Understand?"

She didn't respond right away, just held his gaze for a few long, very tense moments. "I'll think about it."

"Don't think too long, lass. I'll be in my office if you change your mind."

Megan glared at his back until Moriarty had disappeared into the back room, then retook her seat and sighed, wearily, her hands shaking as the adrenaline began to fade from her system. She turned to the bartender and gave him a small and brittle smile, trying to apologize for all the unexpected difficulties she'd unintentionally dropped in his lap. "I… uh… sorry I got you in trouble with your boss, there. I wasn't trying to cause any trouble for you or anything."

The bartender sighed and replied with a small half-shrug. "It's not your fault," he said, tossing a backwards glance over his shoulder to make sure Moriarty had really gone. "He's always looking for some excuse to bust my chops. If it hadn't been you, it'd've been something else. But thanks for sticking up for me. Most folks wouldn't have bothered. Fact, most folks would've just started hitting me when they first saw me, or pulled a gun."

Megan smiled, but it was a wan smile. She knew he was trying to make a joke, but the truly sad part was she had a feeling she understood just how much truth there was behind what he'd just said. "Well, sorry to disappoint. If I'd known you were looking for a fight, I woulda pointed out how that shirt clashes with those pants."

The ghoul almost laughed again, but managed to keep his reaction to a low chuckle. "Heh. Most everyone calls me Gob."

"I'm assuming that's because that's your name."

"Yep."

"A lot of people call me 'Hey, Stupid.' That's -not- my name." She grinned. "You can call me that, or you can call me Megan, which -is- my name."

"Nice to meetcha," Gob said in that nasal, raspy voice of his. "You know, funny thing, you coming on up outta that Vault. We had someone walking in here about a day ago, looked like he was from there, too."

Megan sat up straighter, her eyes opening a little wider as she leaned forward across the counter. "Just under six feet, brown hair, brown eyes, mid forties? Had a hint of Irish in his accent? And not the trashy kind, like your boss, but the good kind?"

Gob tilted his head to the side, shooting her a quizzical look – at least she assumed that was what passed for a quizzical look with him. "Uh. Yeah."

"Where'd he go?"

"Uh… you'll… you'll need to talk to Moriarty about that."

She frowned. She understood why he was being so careful. This must've been the information Moriarty wanted to impart her way, and knowing him, he wanted to charge her for it. Gob was risking more than just a beating by even telling her this much, she knew that, but… "Gob, -please.- He… he's my father. He just up and walked out of the Vault without telling us why, and I've been going out of my -mind- trying to find him."

The ghoul shook his head. He looked contrite. "Kid, listen to me, I ain't tryin' to stonewall you, here. I just don't know what he was doin' here. He came in for just a few minutes. Moriarty recognized him, same as he recognized you, and the two of 'em went off in the back to talk. They came out a half hour later and your Dad left. Never saw 'im again. That's all there was. I swear to you."

A woman with hair almost as red as Megan's own, only curlier and cut shorter took up the stool next to her. She kept her voice low as well so that none of the other patrons could hear. "It's true, honey, he was out here all of ten seconds. We never got the full story. If anyone knows anything, it's Moriarty."

_Great. And he's not quite my best pal at the moment._

Megan groaned. "Terrific. And I haven't exactly made the best impression, have I?"

The other redhead chuckled softly. It was a deep, smoky chuckle, the kind of laugh that was always a permanent fixture in bars. Every pub, every saloon, every cantina had one like it… the jaded, world-weary woman who'd seen it all and who nothing could faze. "I'm sure he's heard worse," she said with a smirk. "Anyway, he's a businessman, darling. The only thing that makes a lasting impression on him are caps. Wave enough of those around, and he'll play nice."

"If I saved the bottlecaps from all the Nuka I drank in the Vault, I'd be richer than sin. Curse me for a goddamn fool. Unfortunately, I don't think they take lint in trade out here." Megan rolled her eyes. "Guess I'll just have to think of a way to scrounge up some cash. Suppose I'd better get on that, then." She made as if to stand up.

"You want a drink before you go, kid?"

"I'm flat broke, Gob. You ever hear the expression 'ain't got nothing but the clothes on my back?' That's pretty much true." She chuckled wryly and picked at the sleeve of her Vault suit.

"This one's on me."

"I don't know. You're already in enough trouble with Chuckles back there..."

He gave her a gentle shake of the head and motioned for her to retake her seat. "I'll worry about that. C'mon, you look thirsty."

"I… thanks, I appreciate it. I think I'd better stay away from the hard stuff, though."

"No problem. I'll get you some water. The bottled stuff. Don't watch you catching too many rads too soon, y'know?"

She nodded slowly, still a little hesitant, but he seemed earnest enough. "All right, if you're sure."

The woman sitting next to her took a puff from her cigarette, tilting her head upwards so she could release the smoke into the air. Megan let her eyes drift a little to the side, watching as the other woman gracefully exhaled, then pulled the cigarette from her lips, her long, nimble fingers tapping the ash from the end of it into an ashtray. She half-turned on her stool, fixing the younger girl with a conspiratorial look, as if they were two old comrades in arms sharing trade secrets. "Trust me, kid," she began in that rich, husky contralto of hers, "word of advice? Something I learned a long time ago: if someone offers to buy you a drink, don't turn it down."

"Heh. Thanks."

"No problem. Name's Nova by the way."

"Pleasure."

-----

Megan had just stepped out the door of Moriarty's Saloon in search of Sheriff Simms when a man wearing a tan-colored and impeccably pressed business suit with matching fedora hat, stopped her. He was leaning casually against a thin metal railing that separated pedestrians in this portion of Megaton from a nasty fall thirty or so feet below. He looked decidedly out of place amongst the grungy citizens of Megaton, but from the way he carried himself, he considered that a badge of honor. He motioned towards her with a hand, indicating she should come a little closer.

She didn't trust him. Just about everything about him raised the little hairs on the back of her neck. True, he didn't -look- like the stereotypical bad guys she'd always heard about in the stories of all the evils that populated the Wastes above-ground. Those were always filthy, wild-looking savages, covered in blood and grime with bestial looks in their eyes, grunting and howling at anything that moved. This guy… was about as far from that trope as one could get, but she couldn't shake that bad feeling she was getting.

Still, it was broad daylight… and out in the open; she wasn't too worried about being attacked. And if his purpose was to mug her (highly unlikely given he sure didn't -look- like a street tough) he wasn't going to be too happy when she found out that all she was carrying in her pockets was a whole lot of nothing.

"Something I can do for you?" she asked, trying to keep her voice casual as she came within whispering distance of him. Up close, her gut instincts were even more on edge than they'd been just a few seconds earlier. Her hazy feelings about him were a little clearer now, that fuzzy impression of unease sharpening. She'd always had a sense about people; she'd never been able to fully explain it, even in her own head, but oftentimes, she'd found her gut feelings about people's intentions, their motivations, tended to be on the money. And her gut was telling her this man wasn't quite on the level. It was the way he walked, his steps deliberately light as if he wanted to touch the ground beneath him as little as possible… the way he just barely managed to hold back a sneer every time someone walked a little too close… or the almost imperceptible way he'd grit his teeth every time he heard one of Megaton's children laugh.

Still, he hadn't actually -said- anything to her yet… she should at least hear him out.

"I was thinking more that there might be something I could do for you." His voice was liquid smooth, like scotch flowing over ice cubes into a tumbler. "I overhead the… conversation you had with Mr. Moriarty inside." He chuckled softly, a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "I have to admit to being quite amused. It's quite easy to best a ruffian such as he in a contest of wits, but so very few even care to try. You did so, and won quite handily."

She wasn't sure where the conversation was going, wasn't sure what this character was getting at, wasn't sure what he wanted from her, but until she -was- sure, she had to play things safe, keep from giving too much away. "Like you said, it wasn't very difficult. Not much of a challenge. Most of his brain cells dried up when the whiskey did."

He chuckled again. "Quite. As I said, I overheard the conversation you had with our… esteemed friend, there. It seems Mr. Moriarty is in possession of some information you require. I'd surmise it has something to do with the location of a certain man who visited Megaton within the past couple of days?" He didn't wait for a response to his question, instead making a show of 'casually' picking a scrap of lint away from the lapel of his suitjacket and flicking it away with a look of scarcely restrained disgust. He turned his gaze back up towards Megan, expecting to find some measure of surprise in her expression and finding himself mildly expressed when her face betrayed none. "I like to keep abreast of the happenings in this… squalid little hole that tries to pass itself off as a town," he said, by way of explanation.

While she'd managed to keep the surprise from her face, that didn't mean she wasn't feeling any. She'd thought that her conversations with Gob and Sheriff Simms hadn't been overheard, but clearly she'd been wrong. She couldn't afford to let on that the extent of his knowledge had rattled her, however. "And you know where this man might've gone?"

"I do not. But I do know how to find out. Your new ghoul friend and his whore companion (Extra-strong emphasis on the "whore" part) are quite correct. Currently, only Moriarty himself is likely to possess that information. But what they failed to tell you is that among Moriarty's many failings is this inane need of his to record every single scrap of information he can get his grubby mitts on, upon the computer terminal in his office. Pertinent or trivial, it doesn't matter to him; everything he can secure is potential blackmail material, and his files are quite extensive, especially for someone residing in this fetid, noxious excuse for a town. I can assist you in obtaining access to that terminal, and in securing the data you would need."

_Really? And how much would this help cost me?_

"That's… uncommonly generous of you, Mister…"

"Burke is my name, and I sense you remain skeptical. That's good. You show more sense than the lackwitted poltroons that inhabit this cesspit. What I'm proposing is actually more akin to an exchange of services. I help you, and you help me."

She nodded. "Of course. Isn't that always the way?"

"Indeed. Quid pro quo, as it were."

_And here's the catch…_

"And what would I have to do to have your help in obtaining Moriarty's files?"

Burke shrugged. It was a casual shrug, as if he were discussing what kind of dessert pastry he'd like to have with his after-meal coffee instead of something far more… sinister. "Simple. The bomb at the center of this insipid little burg. Most of the degenerates who call this revolting place home aren't aware the bomb is still dangerous. It won't explode on its own, but with a little bit of 'motivation' from someone with an intelligence quotient higher than can be counted on two hands… someone such as you and I, for example…"

"Ambitious."

He smiled. "Those destined for greatness have to be, wouldn't you say?"

She folded her arms across her chest. "True. But that seems to be a lot of work, even for some data that could prove useful to me."

"Fair enough. I could probably arrange some monetary compensation to go along with the other reward. I would have to speak to my employer, but I'm certain he wouldn't mind. He's a man of considerable resources, my employer, and more than willing to expend those resources when it comes to securing the talents of capable individuals."

She nodded and arched an eyebrow at him. "So who's this employer of yours?"

"All in good time. All in good time. I can't reveal -too- much until you've agreed to undertake the task. Precautions. You understand, of course."

"Of course."

"So… do we have a deal?"

"Sure. I'm in."


	4. No Boom Today

**Notemeal: (It's healthy, it's nutritious, it's deathly boring!)**

_1. This one was kind of a bear to write. The early stuff not so much, the latter stuff, very much so. The last few scenes, except for the very last scene (which wrote itself months ago, actually) went through several iterations before I got something I was marginally happy with. As it stands, like I said, I'm only "marginally" happy with it, but I've been beating my head against a wall with this chapter for a month now, and I just need to move on. I know it's... lacking... and I do apologize, but hopefully there's still enough here that y'all will have fun with it._

_2. I mean, c'mon, I included a Babylon 5 quote and everything. One of my favorite B5 quotes. Heh._

-----

Entry D, Subsection E-11: "No Boom Today. Boom Tomorrow."

_Craterside Supply_

_Megaton_

"It's a fusion pulse charge."

"Oh, wow! I haven't seen one of these in ages!" Moira Brown, the perpetually cheerful (it was as if she had a kennel full of adorable puppies housed in her brain, keeping her constantly dosed on endorphins,) proprietor of the Craterside Supply general store in Megaton, turned the breadbox-sized device over in her hands and gave it a careful inspection, hemming and hawing thoughtfully as she poked and prodded at the slightly dented external casing. There were no real markings on the box to indicate its function, just the sticky residue that was left behind once the warning labels pasted all over the casing had worn away.

She pulled a screwdriver from the breast pocket of her jumpsuit and removed a couple of the tiny flathead screws keeping one of the side panels on, then peered inside at the various bits of wiring and circuitry inside. "Where'd you get one of these? I didn't realize they even made them anymore."

Megan grinned and offered up a casual little shrug as her only explanation. "Oh, I picked it up from some guy."

The "some guy" she was referring to had been the character in the tan suit she'd run into just outside Moriarty's Saloon: one Mr. Burke. He'd explained to her that the charge, when properly wired into the Megaton bomb's detonation mechanism would be just the catalyst to trigger a rather spectacular nuclear explosion that would remove 'this absurd collection of inbred simpletons and their pitiful tin-can hovels' from the landscape. (His words.) He'd told her that he needed to make a few final preparations – including securing the contents of Moriarty's computer terminal onto a portable storage medium – and that after she'd finished wiring the bomb, to meet her at Tenpenny Tower, his normal base of operations, and the home of his employer. It was a safe distance away, and the bomb could be detonated remotely from there.

She'd accepted both his terms and the small package he'd proffered, then watched him leave to go about his business. Once he was out of sight, she'd ducked into the Megaton Common Room, found a corner where she wasn't under any direct observation, and after finding a jagged piece of scrap metal to use as a makeshift screwdriver, managed to get the front panel off of the charge. Another minute or two, and she was poking around in its neatly organized innards. A minute later, and she'd determined that, indeed, Burke's little toy would be just the thing to 'help' that aging Chinese warhead in Megaton's town center be all it could be. Another five minutes, and she'd discovered how best to -disable- the charge. Thusly armed with that knowledge, she'd picked herself up and set off for Moira's.

"So, I know you don't have any old thermonuclear warheads lying around you need reactivated, but I was thinking you could yank the power supply out of this thing and use it to juice up your Mr. Coffee." She pointed to a battered beverage percolator on a nearby shelf. The plastic trim had long ago succumbed to "battle damage" accrued by extended exposure to the harsh conditions of the Wastes, not to mention old age, but Moira and her almost obsessive desire to tinker with various bits of machinery had kept the internal components in serviceable condition, and all the appliance needed to become operational again was a power source. A micro-fusion reactor was probably (i.e. **definitely**) overkill for such a job, but that wasn't the kind of mundane detail that had ever stopped Megan before, and she had a feeling Moira was a kindred spirit.

Proof of that theory came when the other woman's eyes, hidden behind a thin layer of grease and soot, twinkled in excitement. "Hey, that's a brilliant idea!"

"I know, I thought of it."

Grinning with the kind of innocent delight that only a child receiving a particularly incredible birthday present can exhibit, Moira carefully extracted the pulse charge's power supply. It was an exceedingly delicate affair, requiring a few minutes hunched over the small metal box, pulling apart bundles of cable with a pair of needle-nosed pliers, tweezing apart a few lightly soldered connections here and there, and loosening a handful of teeny-tiny screws, but when she was finished with her task, she had her prize.

The little power cell was no larger than the end segment of her thumb, but for its size, it could generate an enormous amount of power, enough to run hundreds of the little coffee makers simultaneously. Even more amazing, the power unit had incredible longevity, and was likely to last decades longer than the Mr. Coffee itself was. In theory, there were probably better uses for such a miniature technological marvel, but then again, good coffee was a minor miracle in and of itself. It was practically impossible to find any in the Vault; Megan could only imagine searching some out in the Wastes was an even more foolhardy task.

She smiled and watched as Moira quickly installed the power cell into her dilapidated Mr. Coffee machine, and her smile turned into a full-on grin as the machine powered up with a soft hum, seething with pent-up energy, waiting to unleash its capacity for brewing hot and delicious caffeinated beverages on an unsuspecting Wasteland.

Moira reached into a drawer underneath her shop counter and retrieved a small bag containing several vacuum-sealed, foil-wrapped packages. She carefully tore the corner off one of them and emptied the contents into the machine, then loaded the Mr. Coffee up with some fresh water. Though she looked much the same as she had when Megan had first walked in, with her slightly grimy jumpsuit, frazzled hair and soot-stained skin, there was a look of barely contained manic glee on her face, and her voice, always perky, always cheerful, seemed even bubblier than normal. "Want some coffee?"

She was already reaching for a pair of battered ceramic mugs hanging from a rack above her head.

Megan's grin felt like it was going to split her face in half. She held out a hand to accept the mug Moira was already handing to her. "Hell, yes."

-----

_Megaton Town Center (i.e. "The Crater")_

They called themselves the Children of the Atom. At the moment, they were looking rather disappointed. Confessor Cromwell? Disappointed. His wife, Mother Maya? Also disappointed, and perhaps a touch peeved. The rest of their "cult" ran the gamut from indifferent to 'mildly miffed.'

But the way Megan saw it, yes, she was partly responsible for depriving them of some of their spiritual needs. Maybe she -was,- in some small (ok, huge) way trampling upon their religious beliefs, but at least they were still breathing. At least massive radiation exposure hadn't liquefied their internal organs. At least their town hadn't been reduced to a half cup of disoriented atomic matter. At least they weren't completely destitute and could afford a roof over their heads, even if that roof was constructed out of the remnants of old baked-bean cans. And, that last part had nothing to do with the bomb being disarmed, but still, it was something they could be grateful for, and Holy Mary, Mother of God, they oughta be grateful for it, damn it.

Anyway, despite the cult's philosophy of harmony and peaceful coexistence, striving for unity amongst men and women while waiting to be annihilated, (sorry, reincarnated upon a higher plane of existence by the holy, unifying force of the atomic bomb,) they were still a touch irked that Megan and Moira had gone and unholified their holy relic. There had been some very nasty words thrown around, words that Children really weren't supposed to use: words like 'blasphemer,' 'heathen,' 'heretic,' and something that began with the letter "c" and rhymed with "bunt cake" (minus the "cake" part.)

In all actuality, however, the two women hadn't really defiled the bomb/relic, so much as turned it into one enormous, but ultimately benign and completely inert conversation piece… much like the books on neoclassical art that people had used to adorn their coffee tables before the Great War. Those things had never actually been -meant- to be read, no matter what all the cute and sprightly blondes working at those trendy bookshops had tried to make people believe, and it was a complete crying shame that before people had realized the truth of the matter, they'd effectively spent the entire gross domestic product of a small African nation (Namibia for example,) on what essentially amounted to glorified knickknacks.

At any rate, Sheriff Simms hadn't been one hundred percent behind the idea of letting Moira Brown anywhere near a live nuclear warhead – not that Megan blamed him, given the chronicle of Moira's previous escapades. The woman was well-intentioned, one had to grant her that, she just failed to… consider all the possible outcomes of some of her schemes… like the time she'd tried to expand the town's west wall through the judicious use of some surplus detcord and blasting caps. Or the time she'd attempted to "upgrade" the settlement's Protectron defense bot with some enhanced leg servos for faster movement – it'd taken the Stahl family a full week to rebuild the front façade of the Brass Lantern after Deputy Weld had crashed through there on a sprinter's high. (Moira had also seen fit to mess with his programming and had worked in a couple of positive feedback loops "to make the poor thing feel better." Apparently, the deputy had gotten quite the rush from Godzilla-stomping Jenny Stahl's fridge full of Mirelurk cakes.)

Regardless, Moira's help in disarming the bomb permanently had been invaluable. "I've got good news and bad news," Megan said, as Simms looked on nervously from behind her. "Here's the good news. The bomb's deader than disco."

"Who?"

Megan sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. She waved her hand dismissively. "Never mind. It's dead." Walking the short distance over to where the Sheriff stood, she turned her wrist to show him the display on her Pip Boy, then punched a couple of buttons to bring up some tabulated readings she'd been taking with the unit's Geiger Counter since beginning work on the bomb. "You're still getting a little radiation leakage through the cracks in the casing, but a few good hunks of scrap welded over the soft spots ought to take care of it, no problem."

"All right, what's the bad news?"

"The bad news is that you've got yourself a rat in town, Sheriff." Megan sighed again and wiped her hands on a rag, then stepped back fully from the bomb, letting Moira finish putting the access panel back on. There wasn't much need for it now that the nuke was completely inert, but there wasn't any reason to keep it off, either. "Someone tried to hire me to set this weapon off. Wipe Megaton off the face of the Earth. You know, cleansing fire, all that. Real Biblical stuff." She headed over to Moira's toolbox and fished out the remains of the fusion pulse charge, also perfectly harmless with its power supply now serving to bring tasty hot beverages to the lucky chosen few of the Capital Wasteland. She handed Simms the small metal box then went on to explain when he shot her a questioning glance. "He gave me this. It's a fusion pulse charge. I was supposed to wire it into the nuke here to trigger it to explode. We took the power supply out of the charge, so it's about as harmful as a paperweight right now… which I guess is pretty harmful if you chucked it real hard at someone's head, but other than that, won't do anyone all that much good." She shrugged. "Anyway, I ran into this guy over at Moriarty's. Nice fancy suit, hat, the works. Goes by the name Burke?"

The Sheriff's brow furrowed and his expression went dark as the corners of his mouth dropped into a sharp scowl. Unconsciously, his hand dropped down to his waist, fingers twitching as if itching to grab the handle of the large-caliber pistol he wore holstered at his hip. "I know that weasely son of a bitch," he muttered through grit teeth.

"He mentioned another name when I was talking to him. Someone named Tenpenny. No idea who that is."

Simms' frown deepened even further and he let out a disgusted scoffing noise as he pulled the brim of his hat down a little further over his eyes. He wrung his hands, as if needing something to keep them occupied lest he go off and start shooting suspected criminals. "Hmph. Alistair Tenpenny. Some rich asshole, lives in a tall tower a few miles southwest of Megaton. Don't know too much about him other than he's got a ton of money, and money's power out here."

"Of course it is," Megan said with a frown of her own as well as a bit of a sigh. Though still fresh from the Vault, she was starting to understand how things on the "outside" worked. Simms might have been the law here in Megaton, but someone like Tenpenny was well beyond his reach. After all, if Tenpenny could hire someone like Burke, and Burke had the authorization to hire anyone he thought could prove useful, not to mention negotiate the terms of their temporary employment with little to no oversight from his superiors, that meant two things: it meant Burke had a great deal of influence and was well trusted within the organization he worked for, and it meant his employer had some serious resources to spend.

Even with the limited information Simms had just imparted her way, Megan could tell that this Tenpenny character was the kind of man who regularly bought and sold people basically on a whim – the kind of man who thought nothing of playing with people's lives because it amused him… who -destroyed- people's lives because he could. Certainly, he'd proven that with his megalomaniacal plan to wipe out an entire town just because he didn't like the way it looked. The only problem was, if Simms' assessment was correct – and it likely was – someone like Tenpenny was untouchable… at least for now. The idea stuck in her craw – she'd had her fill of tinpot dictators back in the Vault. Back in 101, though, getting to the Overseer hadn't been an impossible task. Difficult, yes, but not impossible. She wasn't yet sure if she could say the same about this Tenpenny fellow, and until she -was- sure, she had to handle things one step at a time. She'd never considered patience to be one of her virtues, but at the moment, she had very little choice. "Well, at the very least, you can put Burke away, right?" she asked.

The Sheriff nodded, his face set in a mask of grim determination. "I plan on it."

He was just about to leave when a man emerged from the rickety old building (all the buildings in Megaton were rickety, but this one was especially rickety – even more so than the others) that served as the town's clinic. He was an older man, dark-skinned, his close-cropped hair and beard having gone white years ago – though perhaps the stress of his life had contributed to that, as it had contributed to the complicated spiderweb of lines on his face. His brow was heavily creased, and he had similar furrows buried all around his eyes, as well. His mouth seemed etched into a perpetual scowl, and every time someone had the ungodly misfortune to make eye contact with him, they'd find themselves on the receiving end of an almost hellish glower that made them suddenly wish they were at the bottom of a ditch, ten miles away, doused in kerosene, on fire, being slowly nibbled to death by diseased molerats.

Only Sheriff Simms didn't seem fazed by the old man's withering, see-into-your-soul stare, and if that annoyed the curmudgeon or earned his grudging respect, no one could really tell; no one had ever worked up the courage to ask.

"Hey, Doc." The Sheriff offered up a perfunctory greeting.

The other man merely grunted as he looked over in their general direction. He'd been headed somewhere else, but when he saw the small crowd gathered over by the bomb, including a face or two that he'd never seen around town before, his curiosity was piqued. It was unsettling that a man so perpetually cranky could still find it within himself to be curious about anything, but it was even more unsettling to be the object of that curiosity. Megan suddenly felt rather like one of those cute little creatures who lived inside a glass cage and who existed for the sole purpose of having fearsome and ghastly concoctions injected into her veins by cackling mad scientists bent on world domination. She tried not to shiver as the man with the white hair and the unnerving stare sized her up, tried not to flinch as his eyes fixed on her Pip Boy, on the bright blue of her Vault suit, on her fair skin… all of which marked where she'd come from as clearly as if she'd started skipping through the streets with a sparkler in each hand, screaming "One. Oh. One!" at the top of her lungs.

She took another quick glance, confirmed that the crotchety old man was, indeed, still staring intently at her, wondered what nefarious purpose he could possibly have in mind for her, and suddenly wondered what it would be like to wake up in a bathtub filled with ice with one of her kidneys missing.

_Could I even -tell- if I was down a kidney? I mean, I just tend to think that's something you'd -miss- but really, how would you even know it was gone? Aside from… you know, that big gaping hole in your abdomen where they went in with the scalpels and stuff-_

_And… okaaaaay… you really need to stop thinking about this kinda shit, Megan, because it is -seriously- morbid._

"Bomb's been defused for good," Simms commented.

"No boom?"

Megan shook her head, swallowed a growing lump in her throat and whispered quietly in response to the old man's question. "No boom."

The man Lucas Simms had called "Doc," however, snorted as if not quite buying what he was hearing. He rolled his eyes and waved a hand, as if he'd heard stories like this one thousands of times before, and wasn't about to believe another one unless he had some kind of proof he could see with his own eyes. Barring that, he was just going to go on assuming the worst was yet to come. "No boom _today._ Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow."

Megan, Moira and Lucas stared blankly at him, as did the members of the Church of Atom that had been watching the proceedings and preparing their nooses for the lynching (behind their backs and out of sight of the Sheriff, of course.) A few of Megaton's other settlers, who had been going about their normal day to day business also stopped when they overheard what was being discussed in the impromptu powwow surrounding the massive nuclear bomb in the town's center. In the space of a few moments, what had been a rather smallish gathering of a dozen or so people had swelled to about three times its original size. All of those people were staring at "Doc" with confused looks on their faces.

He threw up his hands. "What? Look, _somebody's_ gotta have some damn perspective around here!" He grumbled and started walking off towards the Brass Lantern, Megaton's finest (i.e. it's only) restaurant. "Boom," he muttered, half under his breath. Then, louder, "Sooner or later… boom!"

Megan stared blankly at his back as he departed. "What… what's with him?"

"Ah, don't mind him," said Simms with a chuckle and a shrug. "That's Doc Church. He gets a bit ornery sometimes when he's got something on his mind… which means he's _always_ ornery."

-----

_Moriarty's Saloon_

She wasn't sure what she expected to see on Burke's face when she walked through that door behind Simms: surprise, maybe… anger. She briefly entertained the notion of him leaping from his chair, his countenance twisted with savage horror as he realized she'd betrayed him, stabbing accusatory fingers in her direction, and maybe hissing a 'YOU!' of scathing condemnation at her, right before the Sheriff cut him down in a hail of gunfire for his wicked deeds.

But the instant she set foot once again in Moriarty's place, she realized just how wrong she'd been… how blatantly she'd misjudged and underestimated her opponent. Burke was far too skilled at "The Game" to ever make such a foolish move; he had far too much experience with this sort of skullduggery and backblading. It had never occurred to her before, but it suddenly did now, that he must've been the type who'd been -born- spinning wheels within wheels, juggling plots within plots, always analyzing every angle of every situation – that twisted and disturbingly precise mind of his constantly working to determine just how best to turn any situation to his advantage.

Most people couldn't operate that way – chicanery that complex would drive them mad – but for Burke, it was imperative to his continued survival. It was a skill, no, a talent that he'd relied upon for years, and it had never failed him.

Megan met his eyes briefly as she entered the room, but he showed no signs of acknowledgment – showed no signs that he even recognized her – all part of the game, she knew that much. All part of the unspoken, unwritten rules set forth by people who'd been forced to master these kinds of skills just to survive: people like him. That's what he was, after all, a master: and she was just a rank amateur – a crass youth who'd, in a moment of utter folly, thought that she could get the better of him.

_Oh, God… what… what have I gotten myself into?_

She might have foiled his original plan, she found herself thinking, but he had to have contingencies in place. He had to have planned for a possibility such as this. Megan felt the little hairs on the back of her neck stand on edge. She'd come here expecting to gloat… expecting to bring a psychotic to justice, and his murderous plans crashing down upon him. It should've been a moment of triumph – good vanquishing evil, just like in all the movies, the books, the comics… but something… something just didn't feel right. Yes, the bomb was disarmed. She was sure of it. Moira was sure of it. And now she was here with the Sheriff, about to put the bad guy behind bars… or… more likely, in front of the barrel of a .38 Special, given the distinct lack of jails around these parts… but even so, something just felt -wrong.-

Burke seemed too calm, too composed. She and Simms had found him in a corner of Moriarty's place, casually sipping from a tumbler filled with bourbon, looking one hundred percent nonchalant. And yes, she knew that much of it was simply professional pride: the man had been on the other side of the law for far too long to let a little backwater rube with a tin-plated badge intimidate him. But there was more to it than that. He said nothing, even as Simms made his accusations, outlining in excruciating, damning detail, all of what Megan had told him about their deal… she'd wire the charge to the bomb, Megaton would be destroyed, and she'd be rewarded for her efforts.

The evidence was ironclad, at least as far as Simms was concerned. He had Megan's testimony, he had the fusion pulse charge, a disarmed nuke, and a lawman's instinct that had long ago told him that Burke was the type to never be trusted. All told, that was more than enough to convict. And out in the Wastes, convicting a man for a crime of this magnitude could lead to only one conceivable punishment: a death sentence.

Carrying out that sentence, on the other hand, was where things could start to get tricky.

"Edmund Burke? You'll have to come with me," Simms said through grit teeth, keeping a thin veneer of civility only because he didn't want to start a panic by shooting a man dead inside a public building.

"Of course, Sheriff." Burke mostly managed to maintain that pleasantly ingratiating tone he used when dealing with most people he needed to pretend he didn't hate, but his voice slipped slightly on the very last word. He drained the last of the amber liquid from his glass and stood, carefully adjusting first his hat, and then the lapels on his suitjacket. His movements were slow and deliberate, his hands never straying to anywhere that might appear threatening. He looked completely casual – a man merely out for an afternoon stroll. Megan wondered how someone clearly facing death could be so calm, so collected. It was as if he knew something they didn't-

And then it hit her-

What if he -did-?

The Sheriff's eyes were focused on Burke. Naturally. The lawman was watching his target like a hawk, keeping his distance and making sure he didn't try anything. But he was watching Burke so intently that he had no attention to spare for his own back-

"Sheriff! Behind you!"

She was in motion before the words had even finished leaving her mouth.

She couldn't fire her pistol in here. Too crowded. Too likely some innocent bystander would be hit. But the man drawing a bead on Simms didn't seem to have the same compunctions about collateral damage, didn't seem to have the same hang-ups about firing a handgun from in the middle of a crowd that she did.

She dived at him, reached him just in time to spoil his aim, clamping one hand onto his forearm, fingernails digging into his shirt sleeve just above the wrist, while the other hand locked itself onto the gun, trying desperately to force the barrel downwards. The weapon went off with a beguilingly quiet *Tick!* followed by an equally deceptive faint tinkle of brass as the spent casing bounced onto the ground. Someone screamed "Gun!" and the saloon's patrons instinctively went for cover, even as Megan and the gun's owner continued to struggle.

For the redhead, however, it was a losing battle. She was several inches shorter and roughly fifty pounds lighter than the gunman. The initial ferocity of her attack had caught him by surprise, but he was quickly recovering his equilibrium, and as soon as he had it back fully, she was dead. She needed a solution, and she needed it fast. Her eyes scanned the bar, searching desperately for something that could help her, even as her brain fired over and over again, looking for a way out that didn't end up with her dead.

_Think, Meg, THINK! Use that head of yours for something other than a hat rack!_

The only reason she wasn't yet full of holes was because she'd kept her opponent off balance, which meant the only way she could continue to keep herself hole-free (Er… aside from the ones she already possessed,) was to make sure he stayed off balance. She dragged their fight over to one of the nearby tables that had been vacated when the shooting started, and backed her opponent into it, while continuing to whipsaw the gun back and forth, even jamming her own finger between the trigger and the back of the trigger guard so that it couldn't be fired. Not that that was stopping the gunman from trying.

She cried out in pain as he tried to shoot the gun, anyway, his pulling on the trigger nearly crushing her index finger in the process, but she doggedly refused to let him have his weapon back, instead trying to use the pain shooting through her hand to make herself keep fighting. Adrenaline surged through her veins, blurring the edges of her vision, but making everything in the center of it hyper-clear. She caught sight of a bar stool, hooked it with her ankle and flipped it at his shins, causing him to stumble for just a moment. She ducked her shoulder and threw all her weight against him, knocking him backwards into one of the tables. His hand slipped from the gun for just a fraction of a second, but it was enough, and she wrenched it free, sending it skittering across the floor and out of his reach. She wasn't sure where it landed, but it was out of his hands, and that was good enough for the moment.

Unfortunately, though, her move had only angered her opponent, and, snarling, he retaliated by shoving her away from himself with all the force he could muster. She spun into a wall, cracking the side of her head against a support beam. Her vision whirled, her grip on his arm slackened, and he started to fight free of her, reaching for the wicked looking knife at his belt; but now her legs were tangled in his, and the two of them tumbled to the floor. Her limbs felt sluggish; she was having a hard time thinking straight, but she could see his hands moving, see his fingers closing around the hilt of the serrated six-inch knife in the sheath at his hip. She tried to roll free, but his weight was all across her thighs and knees, keeping her pinned, and she had nowhere to go. She'd landed at an awkward angle, partly on her side, her right arm trapped underneath her, her hand twisted underneath the small of her back, making it impossible for her to get to her gun even if she wanted to risk shooting it.

Images of herself lying dead, limbs twisted… her body crumpled in a heap in a pool of her own blood, on the floor of that filthy bar suddenly flooded her mind, but she flung them aside.

_Ok, I get it. You're scared. You don't want to die. So just… just don't die, ok? Not like this. Not to some two-bit hoodlum in some seedy tavern owned by some jerkwad asshole. You fight this son of a bitch, y'hear me? FIGHT him! You get your Irish -up,- girl, and you kick this prick's ass!_

Her fingers scrabbled for the closest thing at hand, anything she could use as a weapon. They crawled along the gritty tile of the saloon floor before closing around the neck of a shattered beer bottle, the mouth still intact enough to hold on to, but with the rest of the browned glass broken away to leave nothing but jagged edges behind. Her eyes were filled with something sticky, and it was hard to see, but she didn't really need to aim, and she brought her arm up in a quick and violent stabbing motion, plunging the makeshift weapon right into the side of the man's neck.

It surprised her how easily the bottleneck penetrated flesh, and even through her haze, she found herself sickened by the eerie *Thuck!* sound it made as it went in. Something hot and wet and slick flooded over her hand and ran down her arm, then splashed onto the front of her suit, but she didn't really notice, she was watching the man's face as it relaxed, the feral snarl softening into an almost confused expression before his eyes started to roll back into his head.

The anger, the fury she had used to keep herself going, to make herself fight, slowly started to fade, replaced instead by a sense of cold numbness deep inside her chest. She blinked, hardly able to believe what she'd just done. But a moment or two passed, and as the import of what she was seeing started to sink in, panic soon followed.

_Oh, God… you just… you just killed a man… I mean, he was… he was going to kill you if you didn't stop him, but… but you… he… you... oh, -God-…_

She lay there, panting, her heart fluttering so much she thought it would seize up like an engine running without oil. The corpse of the man she'd fought still lay slumped half across her legs, his hand still wrapped around the hilt of his knife. When she realized she was still partly buried underneath a dead body, she gave a little yelp and kicked her way free, then got to her feet, her knees wobbling so badly she nearly collapsed again.

She looked around, saw the other patrons in the bar crawling out from behind tables, saw Gob and Nova peeking up from behind the counter. Then she remembered Burke and the Sheriff.

The former was dead – two large caliber rounds had torn through his chest from nearly point blank range.

But the Sheriff was down as well…

_No…_

She staggered over to him, her eyes watering as she realized what she'd done…

Hubris could be such a horrible thing.

She thought she was being smart. Thought she was being cute. Pretend to play along with Burke's little scheme, get him to tell her all about his plans. Worm her way into his confidence by pretending to be his accomplice, and once he'd revealed himself, once he'd incriminated himself so thoroughly that he couldn't possibly talk his way out of things, drop the hammer on him. Report him to the authorities and let justice sort itself out the way justice tended to.

It'd seemed like such a good idea at the time, but she hadn't planned on… well, she hadn't planned on a lot of things. Of course Burke would have brought some muscle with him. He would've been a fool not to. And if there was anything that man was not, it was a fool. She, on the other hand... that was a whole other story entirely, and now it looked like a good man was dead because of her stupidity and her arrogance.

She knelt down next to him, finding the bullet hole in the front of his jacket where Burke must've shot him, saw the growing pool of blood underneath him. "I… I'm sorry," she whispered, her voice cracking from the strain and the raw emotion that was flooding her system. "I'm so… so sorry…"

He groaned.

Her eyes widened, and suddenly every other thought that had been in her head vanished. She was back in the Vault, back in the Infirmary, her father by her side, his patience, normally near infinite, but stretched to even its limits as he tried to teach her some of the skills he had learned over his many years. She hadn't paid as much attention as she should've back then, but… but maybe she'd paid enough. "Someone get Doc Church!" she called out, and was relieved when a couple of the bar's patrons nodded, leapt up, and dashed out the door in response to her words.

As for Megan herself, she carefully rolled the Sheriff onto his side, checked for an exit wound on his back, but couldn't find one. She frowned, but there was nothing she could do about it now. She didn't want to risk removing the bullet herself – she didn't even have any equipment. All she could do was try and stop the bleeding. She rushed over to Burke's corpse, trying not to flinch too badly and trying not to stare at his face which was blank, eyes open in death. She searched for a spot on his suitjacket that hadn't been soaked in blood, looked relatively clean, and was near a seam, then tore it as best she could with her hands. When she did, something fell out of a pocket. She stared blankly at it for a moment before realizing it was a holodisc – likely the information he'd promised to retrieve for her.

No one was paying much attention to her at the moment, so she surreptitiously slipped the disc into her pocket, then took her makeshift bandages back over to her patient, folding one of them into a thick wad and laying it over the wound. She started to press down with both hands, but suddenly felt something cold and metal pressing into the back of her neck. She'd never actually been held at gunpoint before, but she knew instinctively that that was what was happening at this very moment.

"Perhaps you'd best be stepping away from him right now."

She shivered slightly at Moriarty's voice, shivered even more at the shotgun barrel being pressed into the back of her neck. He'd done a shoddy job of filing down the edges of the barrel, and the steel was both cold and sharp against her skin. Her hands came out to her sides and she slowly raised them. "He'll die."

"Aye, that would be the point, lass." The off-handedly callous way he said it made her skin crawl.

For a brief moment she considered doing it. She knew there was no love lost between Simms and Moriarty… knew that getting in the way of their eternal feud was tantamount to suicide. And in this particular case, it -would- be suicide. She had little to gain from getting in Moriarty's way at this juncture, other than earning herself a double dose of ten gauge buckshot to the back of the skull. She could even understand why he was trying to stop her: he wasn't about to risk killing the lawman himself, but if the poor Sheriff had just so happened to get himself shot in the line of duty and bled out before anyone could come to his rescue, well that would just be a crying shame, now wouldn't it?

But Megan didn't see it that way. All she knew was that it had been her arrogance that had gotten Simms into this whole godforsaken mess into the first place. It was her fault that he was lying on the ground with a bullet in him, and if he died, the blame could be traced back to her, and her alone.

_Don't you -dare- back down, now. You got him into this, you are not going to let him die to save your own skin. I don't care how scared you are, you stand your ground, you do what's -right.-_

Her voice wavered, her hands shook, but otherwise, she didn't move. "Then… then you're just going to have to shoot me."

He snorted. "Well, then… if that's how you want it…"

She flinched, waiting for the shot. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she wondered if it would hurt… if she'd even have enough time to register that she'd had her head blown off before she actually died. (Probably not.)

"Put the gun down, Moriarty. I'm not going to ask twice."

Before she could even begin to process what had just happened, she felt the barrel of the shotgun being pulled away from the back of her neck, and the same voice that had ordered its removal spoke again. "You're all right now, Miss."

"Who… who are you?" she asked, but she didn't bother to turn around. She was curious, yes, but her curiosity wasn't enough to override the fact that the Sheriff was still bleeding out right in front of her. She went back to trying to staunch the flow of blood from his gunshot wound.

"Deputy Stockholm. I heard the shots. Came running. Good thing, too."

Of course Burke would bring backup. Likewise, of course a Sheriff would have deputies. Well, besides the glorified tin can standing sentry at the town gate. And thank God, too. He'd showed up just in the nick of time. "Where's… where's Doc Church?" she managed to rasp out, her mouth dry.

"Dunno." There was some shuffling from behind her, but she couldn't spare the time or attention to look. She just had to assume the deputy was handling things behind her. "Saw Lucy West go tearing out of here looking for him. Hopefully she'll find him soon. The Sheriff… is he-"

"It… it's bad…" she confessed. "I… I'm going to need some help."

She was pushing down as hard as she could on the makeshift bandage, applying direct pressure to where the bullet had penetrated the man's side, trying to stop the flow of blood. But the cloth was beginning to soak through, so she reached for another of the scraps she'd cannibalized from Burke's suit, folded it over the one she'd already applied and kept up the pressure. Minutes passed, and still no doctor. "Damn it… where is he?" She whispered to herself. But as frightened as she was, as much as she wished someone more qualified than she would just show up and take over, she wouldn't let herself give up… not when there was so much at stake. She kept her hands clamped over the wound, and maybe it was wishful thinking on her part, but the flow of blood seemed to slow. Of course, that could just have been because he'd lost so much already…

Whatever the case, the job was soon, blessedly, out of her hands. Doc Church came rushing through the door, and soon hands were lifting her up and away to make room for him to work. Someone hustled her outside, and she found herself standing face to face with Nova, the other redhead looking at her intently. Concern was plastered across her features. "You… you all right, sweetie?"

Megan stared blankly back at her, not able to find the words to respond. Her mouth worked itself open, but closed almost immediately afterwards. Her brow furrowed as she kept searching, kept trying to make herself speak, but she simply couldn't manage it.

Nova understood. She nodded her head, put a hand on her shoulder. "Hey, don't worry about the Sheriff. He's a tough guy, and the doc's taking care of him right now. Says it looks worse than it is. You managed to stop the bleeding pretty quick, even with that bastard Moriarty trying to stop you. You probably saved his life, you know."

Part of her wanted to say "thank you." It was a… nice sentiment. The other woman was trying to make her feel better. Another part of her simply wanted to tell her she was out of her goddamn mind. That it was her fault that Simms had been shot in the first place. But she was too damned tired to say either of those things, and so she said nothing at all.

The hard and bitter truth was she should've known better… never should've let things get as far as they had. What she -should've- done was leave Burke to try and find some other patsy. But no… she'd told herself… worse, she'd convinced herself that people like Burke didn't just disappear because they didn't have any toys or people to play with. Folks like Burke lived to cause trouble, and if they didn't have any tools to cause that trouble with, they'd find some. Or make some.

So she'd told herself that this was her only chance to put him away for good. And maybe it had been. But she hadn't seen… hadn't predicted what it might cost – and the simple fact was, she should have.

And so, what should have been a simple arrest had turned into a shootout. The Sheriff had been wounded, and only through sheer dumb luck – she wasn't about to pat herself on the back and give herself any credit for helping him last as long as he had – had he survived. Two other men were dead, one of whom she'd killed herself-

She'd almost forgotten about -that- part.

"Almost" being the operative word.

Before her conscious mind even realized what was going on, she'd whirled around and heaved the upper half of her body over the railing just across from the entrance to the saloon. Her stomach contracted – violently – and she pitched up a good-sized helping of Yum Yum Deviled Eggs.

They were neither Yum nor Yum coming back up, but they were most certainly Deviled.

A few moments later she was down to dry heaves, and Nova was beside her, doing her that most blessed of favors that a woman can do for another woman: she held her hair back while the poor girl continued to hack impotently over the railing. "You ok, honey?" she asked, once Megan's horrific retching had finally come to an end.

"You know… they… they don't tell you about all the crazy stuff that happens once you leave the Vault… all the shooting, stabbing… the killing people. The bits where you almost piss yourself… or, in my case, -do- piss yourself."

"So… you're not all right?"

"I'm fine. I'm so dehydrated, it was only a little pee."

"You're not fine."

"I am. I'm good. I'm not rambling incoherently, am I? I don't think I am." The words were coming out of her mouth now in one prolonged jumble. "I'll just stagger over to Doc Church's once he's got things squared away with the Sheriff. Maybe he's got something to help me sleep. Or, you know, I could just head back inside and stare at those dead bodies a little more until I turn white and pass out. That might work. Oooop, no. Don't need to. Think I'm gonna pass out right now, actually. Here we go." Her knees started to buckle.

Nova's voice sounded very faint all of a sudden, but she could just barely make out what sounded like "Awwww, crap…"


End file.
